The Monday headlines screamed, “Tom Brady Led One Of The GREATEST Comebacks In Sports History Lifting New England From A 25-Point Hole To The Patriots’ Fifth NFL Championship In The First Super Bowl Overtime.” Another said, “The GREATEST Quarterback In NFL History Led The Biggest Super Bowl Comeback To Be The MVP On Sunday Night.”
A better headline might have been, “The GREATEST Quarterback EVER Won The Coin Toss!” That, my friends, is the headline. A coin toss decided what they call the GREATEST Super Bowl EVER! What a silly way to decide the GREATEST game EVER!
Statistics show us that the team that wins the coin toss for an NFL overtime game, wins the game two out of three times. Something about that cries, “FIX ME!” Just in case some of you-including the bosses of the NFL-haven’t heard, high schools and colleges have created a far superior system where BOTH teams get the ball, both teams trade possessions, until one of them can’t keep up with the other on the scoreboard! In other words, their overtime systems are fair to both teams. The NFL’s isn’t. They let the luck of a coin flip be the predominant force in determining a winner that 60 minutes of on-field action couldn’t.
I am not saying that the Atlanta Falcons would have won. Their defense was gassed and had been shredded by Terrific Tom, BUT, don’t you think that almost everybody in America would have liked to see how Matt Ryan and the Falcon offense would have responded?
Super Bowl 51 was terrific entertainment. Perhaps even GREAT, though I am loathe to use that word GREATEST in describing anyone or anything. It simply leaves out far too many other significant achievements. To detract from its’ ranking as one of the best of all time though, by playing with archaic and unfair rules, smacks of silliness AND the GREATEST OF backwardness.
We can only hope that the NFL will flip a coin and try to fix this silliness!
Buddy Tabler is a guest columnist for the Great Bend Tribune and his views don’t necessarily reflect those of the paper. He can be reached at budtabler@gmail.com.
