Alternate Endings

“In real life endings aren’t always neat, whether they’re happy endings, or whether they’re sad endings.”

– Stephen King

Sometimes great stories wrap up with endings that I hate. Even as a huge Stephen King fan, there are a few of his books I’ve thrown across the room when those last few pages were done. Sometimes the ending just feels like it doesn’t belong to the rest of the book, like in a novel like Dune. Or Joss Whedon’s version of Justice League. So many bad things about that movie, but that ending… That ending was even worse than this missing moustache.

But thankfully, the movie was re-released by the original director. While it still wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t the abomination its predecessor had been. Sometimes there are better ways to end a great story.

Wrapping up one of the great weekends in NFL playoff history was Sunday’s jewel, the Buffalo Bills-Kansas City Chiefs showdown. Multiple leads exchanged in the last couple minutes by two of the most dynamic quarterbacks in the game today. A classic of a contest, decided by a tie that sent the game into extra time. A game that nobody wanted to end didn’t…

Until it rather quickly did.

The current overtime ruleset in football ended up cheapening the hell out of the story that game told, as a rocket-hot quarterback stampeded over an exhausted defense to score a touchdown so quickly that they triggered the current sudden-death clause in the rules. Wanted to see the Bills get another shot? Tough.

The sudden death rules haven’t always existed this way in the NFL, and it’s not as if other sports don’t have their own methodologies to decide their extra time.

Football used to play the rules a lot like basketball currently plays its overtimes. You had an extra period, and when it was done, whoever was ahead was the winner. It sometimes made for a very long evening if the teams kept tying. Basketball still sees the joys and issues related to these moments when teams like the Denver Nuggets go to four overtimes before deciding a playoff game.

Hockey’s overtime endings has some similarities to soccer. In NHL overtimes, teams pare down to 3-on-3 squads for a shortened period that ends in sudden death on a score. None of that would work any better for football. But… if hockey games stay tied beyond that extra period, they go to shootout format similar to soccer. Players get one-on-one opportunities to score against the other teams goalie. The closest football could get to something similar might be alternating two-point conversions, or progressively longer field goals. While those options sound ridiculous, they’d have been more entertaining than the blip that was Sunday’s sudden death.

The option that might work best would look more like baseball. When a baseball game is tied at the end of nine innings, the teams go to an inning-at-a-time format. The visiting team gets the first chance to score, and then only wins after scoring if they keep the home team from scoring less in that same frame. Whoever is ahead at the bottom of the inning wins.

Football might try a similar approach. In the Buffalo/KC contest, the Bills would have gotten the first chance to score. If they put up a touchdown, they need to keep the Chiefs out of the end zone to win. If they’re tied, we do it again. Home team always gets the last shot.

Or maybe the league comes up with a brand new system that we’ve never seen before. Maybe they go to a two-on-two format where both teams take Hail Marys until the other breaks. Maybe they do a judged end-zone dance contest. A slam-dunk competition over the crossbar. But when it comes to games like last weekend, capping off one of the great weekends of football in recent memory, the NFL needs to go all Hollywood and look for and alternate ending.