ゲームが延長戦に入るときよりもスポーツファンにとってエキサイティングなことはほとんどありません — そのため、このようなイベントで勝つためのルールが非常に熱く議論されています.
フットボール, America’s top sport, is no exception. しかし NFL そして カレッジフットボール have different rules when it comes to overtime, which leaves fans and pundits arguing over which is the fairest system.
With the top college division’s championship and NFL playoffs quickly approaching, I too began wondering which level of football has the more equitable overtime system. A look at the statistics indicates that it’s likely college, especially in the playoffs, though the difference isn’t as significant as you might think given how the two systems are set up.
The college system for overtime starts with a simple premise: Each team, regardless who wins the overtime coin toss, gets a chance to go on offense from the other team’s 25 yard-line in the first overtime. (After the first overtime the rules do get somewhat more complicated.)
The team that wins the toss usually decides to go on defense first because they can know if the other team scored a touchdown or a field goal or failed to score. Based on that, the team that goes second can choose to be more or less aggressive when they get on offense.
それが判明, でも, there hasn’t been a statistical advantage to going second since 2013. According to data from Oklahoma State’s Rick Wilson, a professor at the Spears School of Business, and my digging through box scores from Sports Reference, there have been nearly 300 overtime games involving Division I Football Bowl Subdivision teams from 2013-2021.
The team that has received the ball second has won 49.7% of the time since 2013, or right about 50% 当時の. 言い換えると, there has not been an advantage to going second.
This year the statistics continue to show no advantage for the team that goes second. 実際には, they have lost four more times than they have won in Sports Reference data. That’s notable because the rules were adjusted this past season, if no team leads after the first overtime. (Read here for more on that rule change.)
It’s tough to be fairer than 50/50 残業中. まだ, there have been some people in the past who argued that the college system isn’t as fair as these stats make it out to be. You can see this in a widely shared tweet from former NFL player and now analyst Ross Tucker, この Ringer article から 2017, and a fairly cited Reddit thread on the fairness of the college overtime system.
I actually agreed with these folks before I looked at the most recent data. What seems to have happened is that there may have been a slight advantage to going second in earlier data.
確かに, the Ringer article cited a paper co-written by Wilson, who has written numerous times on the college overtime system, that showed the team who got the ball second won about 55% of the time from 1995 に 2006. The co-authors of that paper noted, しかしながら, that the sample size was small enough for this difference to barely be statistically significant.
Wilson in an email told me that “there is no statistical significant difference (「レームダック社長. 利点) to choosing to go on defense first in college football OT.” A better predictor of whether you win or lose in overtime is whether you have the more talented team.
The NFL system is quite different. A team can win the overtime coin toss, receive the opening kickoff and win with a touchdown without the other team getting an offensive possession. If the receiving team does not score a touchdown on its first possession (or if the kicking team does not score a touchdown on a turnover), the game continues.
The current system (where you can’t win with a field goal on the opening possession of overtime) has been in place since 2011 for the playoffs そして 2012 for the regular season.
による Stathead database, there have been a little over 160 overtime games under the current rules for winning in overtime (including the postseason). The team that got the ball first has won 52% 当時の. The team that kicked off has won 42% 当時の. The rest were ties, which happens in regular season games when no one scores during the now 10 minute overtime period.
言い換えると, there has been about a 10 percentage point advantage in getting the ball first in the current NFL overtime system. 以来 2017, when the overtime period was shrunk to 10 minutes in the regular season, the advantage in regular season games has been about 14 パーセンテージポイント (53% に 39%).
明確にするために, the advantage of the team that gets the ball first in NFL overtime isn’t dominating. I was surprised by how small it is. If you were to run statistical tests, it’s right on the edge of statistical significance.
FiveThirtyEight’s Neil Paine calls the seeming edge for teams who get the ball first “small but meaningful.” When I chatted with him, he noted that it’s slightly smaller than the home field advantage (「レームダック社長. the home team wins about 14 percentage points more often in the regular season) “but still matters if it’s persistent.”
Put another way, a great team is still likely to beat a bad team in overtime. But when the teams are fairly evenly matched, getting the ball first probably matters.
The playoffs is such a time when the teams are usually fairly evenly matched. Although the sample size is just 10 ゲーム, the team that has gotten the ball first in overtime since 2011 has won nine times — a small sample size but a pretty big statistical departure.
Just ask any Atlanta Falcons fan about Super Bowl LI に 2017, when the New England Patriots won in overtime without the Falcons offense ever taking the field. The Patriots did the same thing to the Kansas City Chiefs two years later in the AFC Championship game.
There’s a reason many Falcons fans cried foul after that Super Bowl. The question over the next month is whether there will be another fan base that loses a playoff overtime game without ever getting to touch the ball.
