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Kissing ties goodbye
Overtime system in Division I football changed end-of-game strategy
Overtime system in Division I football changed end-of-game strategy
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By Greg Johnson
The NCAA News
The NCAA News
Some of the most memorable moments in college football history may not have happened if current overtime rules had been in place.
Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian wouldn’t have taken grief from media and fans for running out the clock and preserving a 10-10 tie against Michigan State in 1966.
Headlines wouldn’t have screamed “Harvard beats Yale 29-29,” after the Crimson rallied from a 16-point deficit in the final two minutes to tie its most bitter rival in 1968.
Instead, both games would have gone to overtime, and someone would have walked away with a satisfying victory.
Or what about the dilemma Nebraska coach Tom Osborne faced in the 1984 Orange Bowl? His top-ranked club scored a touchdown in the final seconds to cut the Miami (Florida) lead to 31-30.
If the overtime tiebreaker system adopted in 1996 had been in place then, would Osborne still have opted for a two-point conversion over the PAT that would most likely have sent the game into extra periods?
Though a tie would have likely kept Nebraska atop the polls, Osborne wanted his team that was hailed as one of the greatest in the history of college football to win the game outright and cap an undefeated season. Maybe history would have been different had Osborne had the overtime option instead of choosing a winner-take-all moment that failed when the two-point pass fell incomplete.
Those scenarios will have to remain as folklore. Since 1996, coaches in all three divisions know if a game is tied in regulation, it will eventually be settled in overtime ...
... Which has produced some folklore of its own.
No more ties
Former Navy football coach Eddie Erdelatz is thought to be among the first to utter, “A tie is like kissing your sister.”
Enough people felt that way about ties to eventually build momentum for change.
“An overtime loss can be devastating, but it beats the alternative,” said Bridgewater (Virginia) football coach Mike Clark, who also chairs the NCAA Football Rules Committee. “Having been involved in overtime, it is an exciting part of the game.”
The Football Rules Committee’s adoption of overtime rules wasn’t a culture shock for everyone. NCAA teams involved in postseason play at the Football Championship Subdivision (then Division I-AA), Division II and Division III already were using overtime as a necessary advancement mechanism.
“Overtime served a purpose, because when you have playoff games, somebody has to move on,” said Chuck Broyles, former rules committee chair and current head coach and athletics director at Pittsburg State. “You couldn’t just flip a coin.”
The tiebreaker for those games called for each team having a possession starting at the opponent’s 25-yard line. The concept was similar to the high school game, though most states’ high school associations have teams start from the opponent’s 10-yard line.
When the NCAA Football Rules Committee decided to extend the playoff overtime structure into the regular season, members decided to retain the 25-yard line as the starting point.
According to NCAA Football Secretary-Rules Editor John Adams, the additional 15 yards offers “a reasonable balance” between the offense and defense.
“We debated where to start,” Adams said. “We didn’t want to make it too easy or too tough to score.”
The only change over the years was in 1997 when the committee began requiring teams to go for two-point conversions beginning with the third overtime. Despite having been accepted as part of the game over the last decade, rare is the rules committee meeting in which the topic doesn’t surface.
The debate usually involves whether the college game should go to the NFL sudden-death format.
“Some people ask why don’t we do overtime like the pros,” Broyles said. “Well if we did that, you may never see a team score. Or maybe only one team may get the ball. At least in the college model, both teams have a chance to possess the ball.”
Broyles compared the college version to match play in golf. One golfer may appear to have an advantage by hitting his or her approach shot 10 feet from the hole, while the opponent is 40 feet away. But if the latter makes the 40-footer, there’s more pressure on the 10-footer.
“That’s the way it feels in overtime” Broyles said. “When you have the ball first and you score, you’re saying, ‘All right!’ Then the other team comes back and scores and you go, ‘Oh gosh.’ Now, they get the ball first. If you stop them, then you think you are going to win for sure. Then you miss a field goal, and the game keeps going. It’s exciting, and there are a lot of ups and downs in overtime.”
‘We’ll play all night’
Arkansas football coach Houston Nutt knows all about those momentum swings. The Razorbacks have played in the two longest overtime games in Football Bowl Subdivision history. They defeated Mississippi, 58-56, in seven overtimes in 2001, and then outlasted Kentucky, 71-63, in seven overtimes in 2003.
They also lost a six-overtime thriller at Tennessee in 2002.
“That’s where we missed a field goal from the 20-yard line,” said Nutt, whose program is 5-1 in overtime since the rule was instituted in 1996. “We should have won that one, too.”
Arkansas is so familiar with overtime in fact that Nutt uses it as a motivational tool.
“At Mississippi, I told the guys, ‘Hey, we’re good in overtime. We’re going to win this thing,’ ” he said. “After it went through the first and second overtimes, I lost track of how many we were in. Our players had the attitude of, ‘We’ll play all night.’ That’s the kind of attitude you have to have.”
The primary concern about overtime tends to be the additional wear and tear on student-athletes. Research commonly indicates that the longer the game lasts, the greater the chance of injury. Many of the multiple-overtime games have eclipsed four hours.
Nutt is aware of the demands overtimes place on his players. He modified his practices after each of those epic games and managed to win the next game all three times.
“We actually practiced for only an hour on the Tuesday and Wednesday of the next week,” Nutt said. “I thought I would never do that in my coaching career. But I knew we were emotionally and physically spent. We cut our game plan down the next week, too.”
“If you get a three-and-a-half or four-hour game and it is 95 degrees in the shade, it is a concern,” said Dave Parry, the national coordinator of football officials for the Collegiate Commissioners Association. “If you go to overtime, then it becomes four-and-a-half hours. That’s when the medical aspects kick in.”
Fortunately, the six and seven overtime periods that Arkansas has played this decade are the exception. In 2006, overtime games in the Football Bowl Subdivision lasted an average of 1.5 periods. Overtime games in Division II and III ended on average between one and three periods.
Most teams choose to play defense first in the collegiate model of overtime. That way when it possesses the ball, it knows how many points it needs to win the game.
But the order is reversed with each subsequent period.
“Both teams will get around the same amount of plays,” Clark said. “In the professional model, you run the risk of having a long, drawn-out event.”
The collegiate model may be long, but it usually is anything but drawn out.
“I don’t think anyone in college — either in the stands or on the field — walks off after an overtime game and says, ‘That really stunk,’ ” Clark said. “I don’t think that has ever happened.”
Most overtime periods
8 — Bethune-Cookman (63) vs. Virginia St. (57), September 26, 1998
7 — Arkansas (58) at Mississippi (56), November 3, 2001
7 — Arkansas (71) at Kentucky (63), November 1, 2003
7 — North Texas (25) vs. Florida International (22), October 7, 2006
6 — Tennessee (41) vs. Arkansas (38), October 5, 2002
6 — Rhode Island (58) vs. Maine (55), September 18, 1982
6 — Villanova (41) vs. Connecticut (35), October 7, 1989
6 — Florida A&M (59) vs. Hampton (58), October 5, 1996
6 — Adams St. (55) vs. Neb.-Kearney (48), September 19, 1998
Overtime games in Division III were not tracked until 2002. Since then, no Division III game has lasted more than four overtimes.
Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian wouldn’t have taken grief from media and fans for running out the clock and preserving a 10-10 tie against Michigan State in 1966.
Headlines wouldn’t have screamed “Harvard beats Yale 29-29,” after the Crimson rallied from a 16-point deficit in the final two minutes to tie its most bitter rival in 1968.
Instead, both games would have gone to overtime, and someone would have walked away with a satisfying victory.
Or what about the dilemma Nebraska coach Tom Osborne faced in the 1984 Orange Bowl? His top-ranked club scored a touchdown in the final seconds to cut the Miami (Florida) lead to 31-30.
If the overtime tiebreaker system adopted in 1996 had been in place then, would Osborne still have opted for a two-point conversion over the PAT that would most likely have sent the game into extra periods?
Though a tie would have likely kept Nebraska atop the polls, Osborne wanted his team that was hailed as one of the greatest in the history of college football to win the game outright and cap an undefeated season. Maybe history would have been different had Osborne had the overtime option instead of choosing a winner-take-all moment that failed when the two-point pass fell incomplete.
Those scenarios will have to remain as folklore. Since 1996, coaches in all three divisions know if a game is tied in regulation, it will eventually be settled in overtime ...... Which has produced some folklore of its own.
No more ties
Former Navy football coach Eddie Erdelatz is thought to be among the first to utter, “A tie is like kissing your sister.”
Enough people felt that way about ties to eventually build momentum for change.
“An overtime loss can be devastating, but it beats the alternative,” said Bridgewater (Virginia) football coach Mike Clark, who also chairs the NCAA Football Rules Committee. “Having been involved in overtime, it is an exciting part of the game.”
The Football Rules Committee’s adoption of overtime rules wasn’t a culture shock for everyone. NCAA teams involved in postseason play at the Football Championship Subdivision (then Division I-AA), Division II and Division III already were using overtime as a necessary advancement mechanism.
“Overtime served a purpose, because when you have playoff games, somebody has to move on,” said Chuck Broyles, former rules committee chair and current head coach and athletics director at Pittsburg State. “You couldn’t just flip a coin.”
The tiebreaker for those games called for each team having a possession starting at the opponent’s 25-yard line. The concept was similar to the high school game, though most states’ high school associations have teams start from the opponent’s 10-yard line.
When the NCAA Football Rules Committee decided to extend the playoff overtime structure into the regular season, members decided to retain the 25-yard line as the starting point.
According to NCAA Football Secretary-Rules Editor John Adams, the additional 15 yards offers “a reasonable balance” between the offense and defense.
“We debated where to start,” Adams said. “We didn’t want to make it too easy or too tough to score.”
The only change over the years was in 1997 when the committee began requiring teams to go for two-point conversions beginning with the third overtime. Despite having been accepted as part of the game over the last decade, rare is the rules committee meeting in which the topic doesn’t surface.
The debate usually involves whether the college game should go to the NFL sudden-death format.
“Some people ask why don’t we do overtime like the pros,” Broyles said. “Well if we did that, you may never see a team score. Or maybe only one team may get the ball. At least in the college model, both teams have a chance to possess the ball.”
Broyles compared the college version to match play in golf. One golfer may appear to have an advantage by hitting his or her approach shot 10 feet from the hole, while the opponent is 40 feet away. But if the latter makes the 40-footer, there’s more pressure on the 10-footer.
“That’s the way it feels in overtime” Broyles said. “When you have the ball first and you score, you’re saying, ‘All right!’ Then the other team comes back and scores and you go, ‘Oh gosh.’ Now, they get the ball first. If you stop them, then you think you are going to win for sure. Then you miss a field goal, and the game keeps going. It’s exciting, and there are a lot of ups and downs in overtime.”
‘We’ll play all night’
Arkansas football coach Houston Nutt knows all about those momentum swings. The Razorbacks have played in the two longest overtime games in Football Bowl Subdivision history. They defeated Mississippi, 58-56, in seven overtimes in 2001, and then outlasted Kentucky, 71-63, in seven overtimes in 2003.
They also lost a six-overtime thriller at Tennessee in 2002.
“That’s where we missed a field goal from the 20-yard line,” said Nutt, whose program is 5-1 in overtime since the rule was instituted in 1996. “We should have won that one, too.”
Arkansas is so familiar with overtime in fact that Nutt uses it as a motivational tool.
“At Mississippi, I told the guys, ‘Hey, we’re good in overtime. We’re going to win this thing,’ ” he said. “After it went through the first and second overtimes, I lost track of how many we were in. Our players had the attitude of, ‘We’ll play all night.’ That’s the kind of attitude you have to have.”
The primary concern about overtime tends to be the additional wear and tear on student-athletes. Research commonly indicates that the longer the game lasts, the greater the chance of injury. Many of the multiple-overtime games have eclipsed four hours.
Nutt is aware of the demands overtimes place on his players. He modified his practices after each of those epic games and managed to win the next game all three times.
“We actually practiced for only an hour on the Tuesday and Wednesday of the next week,” Nutt said. “I thought I would never do that in my coaching career. But I knew we were emotionally and physically spent. We cut our game plan down the next week, too.”
“If you get a three-and-a-half or four-hour game and it is 95 degrees in the shade, it is a concern,” said Dave Parry, the national coordinator of football officials for the Collegiate Commissioners Association. “If you go to overtime, then it becomes four-and-a-half hours. That’s when the medical aspects kick in.”
Fortunately, the six and seven overtime periods that Arkansas has played this decade are the exception. In 2006, overtime games in the Football Bowl Subdivision lasted an average of 1.5 periods. Overtime games in Division II and III ended on average between one and three periods.
Most teams choose to play defense first in the collegiate model of overtime. That way when it possesses the ball, it knows how many points it needs to win the game.
But the order is reversed with each subsequent period.
“Both teams will get around the same amount of plays,” Clark said. “In the professional model, you run the risk of having a long, drawn-out event.”
The collegiate model may be long, but it usually is anything but drawn out.
“I don’t think anyone in college — either in the stands or on the field — walks off after an overtime game and says, ‘That really stunk,’ ” Clark said. “I don’t think that has ever happened.”
Most overtime periods
8 — Bethune-Cookman (63) vs. Virginia St. (57), September 26, 1998
7 — Arkansas (58) at Mississippi (56), November 3, 2001
7 — Arkansas (71) at Kentucky (63), November 1, 2003
7 — North Texas (25) vs. Florida International (22), October 7, 2006
6 — Tennessee (41) vs. Arkansas (38), October 5, 2002
6 — Rhode Island (58) vs. Maine (55), September 18, 1982
6 — Villanova (41) vs. Connecticut (35), October 7, 1989
6 — Florida A&M (59) vs. Hampton (58), October 5, 1996
6 — Adams St. (55) vs. Neb.-Kearney (48), September 19, 1998
Overtime games in Division III were not tracked until 2002. Since then, no Division III game has lasted more than four overtimes.
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