One more thought to add, since two of yesterday’s knockout matches in the World Cup finished with exciting penalty kicks after 120 (and some) minutes of game action.
Paraguay defeated Germany 4-3 on penalty kicks, and Morocco gave the Netherlands an early exit via penalties, 3-2.
Group play, as we saw, matches could finish with draws as finals.
The NFL, begrudgingly, will recognize ties, but they don’t happen often at the NFL level.
College football used to have tie games until 1996, and now, after 29 years of watching this sport (actually, I’ll admit I haven’t been watching since 1996, but I digress) be played with the overtime rules to make sure there’s always have a winning and losing team.
Watching some of the recent soccer matches end in draws has been a little bit refreshing for me. The standings, to determine who qualifies for the knockout round, still work themselves out just fine for the most part.
Alternatively, everybody who looks like they should be in the knockout round is in there.
The good to great teams aren’t looking good on tie games. Those teams set themselves apart with big victories.
But once the knockout round comes in the World Cup, draws are a thing of the past. Somebody has to lose in the high-stakes competition.
After 90 minutes of regular play time, tied teams get two, 15-minute extra time halves to try and settle the continued game.
After 120 minutes (plus any extra time added), if still tied, FIFA has these teams engage in a 5-round shootout. It’s not exactly purebred soccer, but it’s exciting.
College football’s overtime can be exciting, but I think the sport should at least re-open the idea of letting regular season games end in ties.
Especially for low-stakes games that don't impact anybody’s conference standings, what’s an overtime game going to settle?
I can buy the need for OT in league games, but only because conference championship games still exist.
Overtime rules in college football stink because 1. they’re not good, and 2. there are way too many multiple-overtime games as-is. There will always be time to come back to this topic and propose better ways to handle college football’s overtime, but an easy fix is to easily re-accept ties as final scores stop playing so many overtime games in the first place.