COMMENTARY : FOOTBALL TIEBREAKER SHOULD GET AN F FOR EXECUTION.

Byline: Andrew Bagnato Chicago Tribune 

``You're listening to KLIP, America's sports-talk giant. Today's subject: The new NCAA football tiebreaker. Our first caller is Bud Selig, acting baseball commissioner. Bud, what do you think of the new system?''

``Fred, we think it's great. Starting with the World Series, we're not going to have extra innings anymore. Too many balls and strikes and all that. If the score's tied after nine innings, we're going to have a home-run hitting contest.''

``Great, Bud! Next up is NBA Commish David Stern! We hear you're dumping overtime this season!''

``That's right. From now on, we're going straight to H-O-R-S-E at the end of a tie game.''

``What an idea, Dave! And now we go to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, holding on a car phone in Ottawa!''

``Puckheads will love this one: If a game is tied after three periods, players will stand on a strip of carpet at center ice and try to fire the puck through a placard attached to the goal. I saw it in Chicago last year. The fans loved it.''

Sound too silly to be true? That's what the NCAA's tiebreaker is.

Make no mistake: Overtime is a good thing for college football, and it follows the trend toward deciding issues on the field (see the expanded bowl alliance).

Give the NCAA an A for concept. But it deserves an F for execution.

Under the NCAA's overtime system, each team takes the ball at its opponent's 25-yard line and retains possession until it scores, makes a first down or commits a turnover. The team with the most points after alternating possessions wins, and if the game is still tied, the process begins again.

Sound complicated? Imagine what it looks like to the uninformed spectator in the grandstand. Many in Champaign's Memorial Stadium had no clue what was happening when Illinois outlasted Indiana 46-43 on Oct. 12 in double overtime in the Big Ten's first tiebreaker.

The Big Ten's weekly press release called it a ``thriller.'' The fans knew better. Said one longtime season-ticket holder, ``It wasn't even remotely interesting.''

The NCAA supposedly opted for this tiebreaker - which has long been used in lower college divisions - instead of the NFL's sudden-death version because television wanted brevity, and OT periods may drag on for 45 minutes.

But the coaches sniffed a rat when the NCAA introduced the tiebreaker to the major football powers last postseason. As his team prepared to meet Florida in the Fiesta Bowl, Nebraska coach Tom Osborne was asked to discuss his strategy if the game went into overtime.

After a stammer or two, Osborne said he didn't have the vaguest idea, nor did any of his veteran assistants. He even said that as the Cornhuskers prepared for the biggest game of the year, they brought in a Nebraska high school coach to give a chalk talk.

Many of the reporters at Osborne's press conference looked at each other in disbelief. How could a man who has devoted his professional life to understanding the most minute details of football not know the basics of the new tiebreaker?

Because the new tiebreaker isn't football.

At its most basic level, football is about real estate: defending it and acquiring it. How many times do you hear a losing coach gripe about lousy field position?

The NCAA tiebreaker makes field position irrelevant. And it does away with the long, dramatic drives that make the college game so riveting.

The NCAA's system is unfair to pass-oriented teams because it eliminates the deep threat. And it rewards teams with strong place-kickers, because if a team doesn't lose yardage it is guaranteed a shot at a 42-yard field goal. Some coaches have said that if their kicker was good enough, they'd try a field goal on first down. Why risk a turnover?

Many coaches agree with Michigan State's Nick Saban. He endorses overtime but would rather see an NFL-style tiebreaker. ``Maybe to play the same game under the same rules would be the best way to do it,'' said Saban, a former Cleveland Browns assistant coach. ``That doesn't take a new strategy.''

The NCAA's system changes the rules in overtime. The only other sport that does this is soccer, which settled the 1994 World Cup with a ludicrous shootout between Brazil and Italy. Somewhere in the U.S. Constitution, there has to be a law against college football mimicking soccer.

So here's a memo from all of us here at KLIP to the good folks at the NCAA: Go with sudden death. If they're still tied after one overtime quarter, play another, and another after that if necessary. Television will adjust. The rest of us won't have to.