Anonymous wrote:
Ed wrote:
To say that I dislike the 'tie rule' is putting it mildly.
I just don't understand why Americans hate ties/draws.
Some days neither team deserves to win.
Some days neither team deserves to lose.
Some days the teams are just evenly matched.
I can think of only a couple of professional or serious amateur sports world wide that don't have some form of overtime or tiebreaker: the various forms of racing (auto-bobsled-running, cycling etc) and soccer. With racing, it is probably technically possible for a race to end in a dead heat, but professional races have cameras and/or timers to check who crossed the finish line first, and the odds of both people or vehicles crossing the finish line at exactly the same time, when measured in 100ths of a second, are extremely small. Soccer CAN have a small extra period or a shootout in some leagues, but almost all high school or greater teams have an automatic Extra Time made up of the time lost during the game due to injuries or other official time stoppages during the game. This Extra time allows the teams to play beyond the 90 official minutes of a game. The difference here I guess is that Extra Time is played even if the score is not tied at the end of regulation.
In professional leagues Rugby has OT, Cricket can have them for tournaments, in Curling if the score is tied after the last END then play continues until there is a winner, so it's not just Americans that don't like ties. I can remember when the NFL would ONLY play overtime for playoff and championship games, regular season ties remained a tie. OT was first added in 1974 and overtime rules have been modified multiple times since.