NFL reduces overtime period from 15 minutes to 10, but why?

Yahoo ^ | 05/23/2017 | Eric Edholm

[Phlap]

CHICAGO — Beware standings tiebreaker person … an 8-5-3 division champion could be coming to the NFL soon.

The league reportedly has passed a rule at the owners meeting on Tuesday that will shorten the length of regular-season overtime games from 15 minutes to 10. There were two ties in the NFL last season, as many as there had been in the prior three seasons combined.

But this feels like a solution looking for a problem to us. How is this going to help … with anything? The NFL is expected to officially announce the changes later on Tuesday.

[WVMnteer]

That was true in 1978 maybe.

The Cowboys line (which is good as it should be considering the resources they poured into it) comes from these colleges:

USC
LSU
Wisconsin
Notre Dame
Florida

I’m fairly certain that everyone scouts those five schools.

[WVMnteer]

That was true in 1978 maybe.

The Cowboys line (which is good as it should be considering the resources they poured into it) comes from these colleges:

USC
LSU
Wisconsin
Notre Dame
Florida

I’m fairly certain that everyone scouts those five schools.

[dfwgator]

I just wish the OL from Florida actually played better when they were at Florida.

[discostu]

It’s not parity that does that, it’s poorly managing the cap. Teams that over spend for talent need to split up their line because they can’t afford them. Teams that manage their cap well don’t.

[discostu]

It wasn’t a function of NFC dominance it was a function of dynasties. Half those SBs won by two teams. The NFC as a whole wasn’t that dominant, cross conference was close to 500. But there were the mighty dynasties that were just plain better than everybody else. Outside of those dynasties the NFC wasn’t that great (especially not the NFC Central, home to the twice annual Bay of Pigs games where the incredibly awful Packers and Bucs played terrible football twice a year). That’s what everybody forgets about that era, they remember the dynastic teams playing great football in their playoff matches, they forget that the rest of the league mostly was terrible and played unwatchable football.

Dynasties are boring. Just look at the NBA. 2 years ago I said the only way we weren’t seeing a rematch in the finals was if Lebron or Curry got hurt, with an outside chance of the Spurs figuring out the Warriors. Last year I said the same thing. I’ll go even further and say that the only way it’s not Warriors Cavs NEXT year is if Lebron or Curry get hurt with an outside chance the Celtics figuring out the Cavs (forget the Spurs, they’re done). The entire NBA season and most of the playoffs have no meaning to the league. And they’re unwatchable because there just isn’t the talent on those other rosters.

[PhilCollins]

I agree with you. I don’t hate ties. I usually like seeing close games, and nothing is closer than a tie.

[WVMnteer]

This has always been the problem with the NBA though. The team with the best player is always going to be one of the best teams. If the best player is teamed with another all-star, they are almost certainly going to win the title.

Magic’s Lakers were in the Finals 9 times. Most of the time, that march to the Finals was a cakewalk.

Bird’s Celtics went 5 times, mainly because the East had two other great teams - Doc’s 76ers and later Isiah’s Pistons.

But if you like any team other than the Lakers, Celtics, Sixers, or Pistons in the 80s, what were you really doing with your life?

Basketball at all levels just seems to lend itself to dynasties better. Lebron is literally 20 percent of the Cavs. Tom Brady is 4.5 percent of the Patriots.

[WVMnteer]

There is a big element of luck in “managing the cap.” Russell Wilson on a rookie contract allowed the Seahawks to spend huge money elsewhere on their roster. Now, he’s getting paid like a Super Bowl winning QB, and the roster is suddenly a little spare.

What no one ever talks about is that Tom Brady is married to one of the richest female celebrities on Earth. He is NOT the breadwinner in that family. As such, he has the ability to play for a below-market contract knowing that he’s highly unlikely to blow through his earnings after football.

Most football players know they are one bad step away from a life back in the workforce so they need to get as much as possible as soon as possible.

Brady - who probably has some sort of handshake deal for a piece of the Patriots after he retires as well as a billionaire wife - doesn’t have that issue.

[discostu]

The NBA has always had layers, but in recent years the top is VERY top, and below that is mostly crap. Basically for the last decade each conference has had one super team, maybe also a pretty good team that could challenge the super team, and everybody else is the dregs. The NBA has been on tape delay in the past, and there were more good teams in the league then.

[discostu]

There’s a little luck in managing the cap. But most of it is understanding the resources are finite.

Pats cap management starts with Brady. But it goes down the roster. They let a lot of big name players go to not blow up the math. Quite a few former Pats talk about the chart in Bill’s office that shows the most you should pay for a starter at each position and the most you should pay for the entire depth chart of that position. Bill understands that overpaying a wide receiver by just a million dollars means lowering the talent in some other position. And players that buy into that stay, win championships, and make up the “lost” salary with endorsement deals, and players that don’t leave in free agency, and the league gives the Pats compensational picks for “losing” more talent than they “gain” (technically everybody can get compensational picks, but the Pats have perfected it).

[WVMnteer]

We disagree here. I think the NBA has more talent top to bottom right now than at any time in its history. It also happens to be the case that Lebron is just that good.

Really, the skewing here lies with Lebron. He is in year 14 of his career, and seems to actually be getting better.

Jordan was in his second retirement at this point. Bird was retired for good. Magic had retired due to his illness. Shaq was in the “Fat Shaq chasing a ring” stage of his career.

The only wing player to ever remotely do what Lebron is doing was Kobe, and Kobe was kind of one-dimensional.

The Warriors are something like a disruptive historical force. No team has ever played the way they do and succeeded. Mainly because no team has ever had three historically great shooters and player like Draymond Green that can guard centers on defense and play like Larry Bird on offense. It’s really only been three years of this for them, and I think their window will close shockingly fast when it does. They rely on a lot of basketball unicorns.

I also remember the 80s really well. There were a lot of teams with one guy like Alex English - aesthetically pleasing All-Stars who had no chance of ever leading a team to a title.

[discostu]

The NBA sent 6 teams with 43 wins or less to the playoffs this year. 2 with 41 wins. That’s a lot of mediocre at best teams in the playoffs. that’s not Lebron skewing things, that’s a bad league filled with bad teams.

Where Lebron’s skewing effect really comes in is roster building. That trip to Miami to build a super team taught the league two things: if you want to contend you must blow up the cap, if you build a team that good jersey will pay your cap fines. And the Warriors followed suit. I don’t think their window will be closing that quick, because they’ve added another wrinkle to that Miami model: once you have that super team other great players (KD) will beg to join. As long as the Warrior don’t lose more pieces than they can gain, or nobody else in the Western Conference find the right way to rape the cap, they’ll be on top.

[JohnyBoy]

I wasn’t aware that anyone still watched Felonball.

[WVMnteer]

I get the impression that half the people here stopped watching sports in 1997, and think Allen Iverson is still the biggest star in the league.

You are more likely to find NBA stars at fashion shows in Milan now than you are to find them in night clubs in SE DC.

[Alberta's Child]

Right -- but I was thinking even later than the 1970s.

The Cowboys of the 1992-95 period that won three Super Bowls in four years had 15 different offensive linemen on their roster. Here were the places where they played college ball (roughly in order of the school's reputation for its NCAA football program):

UCLA
Washington
Pittsburgh
North Carolina State
Boston College
Temple
UNLV
Tulane
Nevada
Florida A&M
Hawaii
East Texas State
Sacramento State
Sonoma State
Central State (Ohio)

Those are some pretty obscure schools there, for sure. I never even heard of the last four on that list.

[Alberta's Child]

It seems to me that the NFL of that era had a more "normal" bell curve than it does today. Some of those teams you mention from the 1980s were simply bad organizations that were run poorly. There's no fix in the world for incompetence -- as we've seen in more recent years with the Cleveland Browns, the Detroit Lions (a few years ago) and the Jacksonville Jaguars (are they still an NFL team?).

Dynasties are boring only if they are built on some kind of advantage in the sport that pushes some teams to the top and eliminates others from any reasonable chance at contending. MLB was like that back in the middle of the last century, when teams from the larger markets dominated the game and many small-market teams were no better than minor league franchises.

I don't think a dynasty built on a solid organization, great personnel decisions, and a great coaching staff hurts a sport at all. A lot of hockey fans will tell you that the first 25+ years of the post-expansion era in hockey (roughly 1967-1994) was the absolute heyday of the National Hockey League -- and that era was dominated by dynasties.

The era from the 1967-68 season to the 1993-94 season covers 27 seasons, and there were only two Stanley Cup champions in that era who only won a single title:

Montreal (10)
Edmonton (5)
NY Islanders (4)
Boston (2)
Philadelphia (2)
Pittsburgh (2)
Calgary (1)
NY Rangers (1)

That era saw some of the greatest players the game has ever seen, and included team and individual performances that may never be matched in the NHL again. Notice that half of the teams on that list would be considered "small market" teams today, and most of those small-market teams faced financial troubles later on that threatened their existence.

I agree with your assessment of the NBA, but that organization has a whole different problem. Basketball is a simple game with a smaller cohort of players than any other sport, and it's easy for a team with two great players or three very good players to dominate the game. I don't know what has changed in the NBA in recent years (I haven't watched a basketball game in years), but as recently as the 1980s there were a lot of exciting playoff series in the early rounds even though the Celtics, Lakers and Pistons seemed to win most of the titles back then.

[Mr.Unique]

Why not decide the winner with a series of penalty goal kicks? Oh, that’s right. They already do in REAL football.

There's nothing more exciting than a kicking contest at the end of 93.2 minutes of 0-0 play.

[discostu]

The problem with dynasties is they disengage the other fans. Sports fandom is built on the lie of “maybe this year”. And the sooner that lie gets shattered the sooner fans disengage. Your NHL list is a great example, while that era saw great players and great play not very many people saw it. That was the era when the NHL lost TV contract after TV contract eventually going a decade without an over the air contract. It took until the Comcast/NBC merger to really fix the TV revenue damage done in that era.

That’s the balance sports leagues need to find. A few teams capable of performing the game at the highest level makes for beauty in the sport (at least when those teams face each other). But it’s bad for revenues. Revenue comes from as many fans being engaged in the season as long as possible. That era of the NHL was enjoyed by fans of the Habs and general “pure” hockey fans (with some windows of engagement from Isles and Oilers fans). But fans that didn’t look beyond their team lost interest quickly during the season. The current NHL world where most of the league is in the hunt for the playoffs until the last month and anybody that makes the playoff has a shot is much better for fan engagement.

[WVMnteer]

I honestly think the days of the obscure superstar are largely over - with obvious exceptions like Antonio Brown floating around out there.

Back in the 70s, the smart teams - like the Steelers and Cowboys - knew where to find obscure talent (generally at the HBCUs).

That still existed somewhat in the 90s.

Today, every college and pro coach in the country knows the names of the top 1,000 high school sophomores in the country and has film of all of them on their Ipad.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to fall through the cracks. You almost have to work at it - which Antonio Brown kind of did. He basically ran away from home at 17, couldn’t qualify academically for college, and played QB of all things at a JuCo.

I honestly think the only thing that team’s can really control in the NFL right now is some level of continuity. That means smartly managing your cap so you can have controlled chaos on your roster and not massive turnover. That means finding a QB and keeping a coaching staff and front office in place for more than a year.

I don’t think Mike Tomlin is a master strategist by any means. But his players like him and generally know what he wants to do. Add in a good QB, and you can compete in the NFL.

Hell, the Bengals stumbled into some kind of respectability simply because they are too cheap to ever fire Marvin Lewis.

[Alberta's Child]

The NHL was never cut out for national TV contracts in the first place. Heck -- I don't think hockey is cut out for TV, period.

I'd make the case that the sport was better off before the pursuit of national TV revenue drove a number of decisions that were idiotic by any objective measure. Perfect case in point: moving teams Quebec City, Winnipeg and Hartford to Denver, Phoenix and Raleigh. The league's core strategy over the last 25 years has been to expand into markets with large populations and almost zero fan interest -- for the sole purpose of establishing a national footprint for TV coverage. That's a disaster in the making, and the number of financially struggling franchises in southern U.S. markets (Phoenix, Carolina, Florida, etc.) would confirm that.

How many people are going to see a hypothetical Stanley Cup finals matchup between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Nashville Predators? That series would probably have fewer viewers than they'd get for a matchup between Chicago and Montreal -- even without a national TV contract here in the U.S.