Jackie Marks's List: Auction on Overtime

American football

The National Football League uses a  modified sudden-death system in the regular season. Prior to 1974, an NFL  regular-season game tied at the end of regulation time ended as a tie.  Sudden-death overtime was used only in playoff games, with the 1958 NFL championship ending in  overtime.

In 1974, however, the NFL adopted a 15-minute sudden-death overtime period.  The game ends as a tie if neither team scores in overtime. When a team gets near  the end zone, it typically tries  to kick a field goal. An overtime game can also be  won by scoring a touchdown. This  usually happens on a play that begins far enough away from the end zone to make  a field goal difficult, but it can also result from a team exercising solid ball  control and simply never getting to a fourth-down situation. (The touchdown ends  the game and no extra point is attempted.) Only twice has an overtime game been  won by a safety. In recent years, sportscasters  have referred to such scoring plays as "walk-offs," as both teams can walk off  the field after the play.

During championship playoffs, all games are played to a conclusion resulting  in a victory for one team and a loss for the other. Any game tied after 60  minutes moves to one or more overtimes using true sudden death. As at the start  of the game, initial possession for the overtime can be elected by the team that  wins a coin toss. Controversy about the NFL rule recurs whenever a playoff game  is won without the losing team ever having had possession of the ball in the  overtime period. Largely in answer to this criticism, the tiebreaking system  adopted in college  and Canadian  football involves baseball-style "innings" in which each team alternates  possessions until one outscores the other during a corresponding "inning" (see  Overtime).

For information on games that have taken a long time under sudden death, see  Overtime.