There are some things that just don't make sense no matter how many times they're explained to you.
The college football bowl system.
The economy.
The celebration penalty.
Cher's singing career.
Oh, yes, and the NFL overtime format.
If today's opening round of the NFL playoffs is anything like the regular season, there's a good chance one of the games will be settled by overtime — which is to say a coin toss and a kicker.
Yippee.
Here's what usually happens in overtime: The team that wins the coin toss completes a couple of passes, runs a few times into the line to place the ball in the middle of the field, and then kicks a field goal. End of game. After three hours of blocking, tackling, passing and running, the game is settled by a 5-foot-nothing kicker named Garo and a referee's coin toss.
This isn't football, it's soccer.
Is this fair? The first team to win the overtime coin toss usually is the first team to score. The first team to score, wins. The other team probably won't even touch the ball.
Pro football is the only sport that doesn't give each team an equal number of attempts to win a game. In basketball, both teams receive an extra five minutes to break a tie. In baseball, both teams get an equal number of at-bats. In hockey, the faceoff gives teams an equal chance of first possession. In a golf playoff, each player plays the same number of holes.
Tennis gives players an equal number of service turns in a tiebreaker. Even college and high school football give each team the same number of possessions in overtime.
But not the NFL. Lose the coin toss, you probably lose the game.
The league needs something more equitable, not to mention more entertaining, if it is going to continue to foster parity. Overtime games are the rage. This season, 25 games were decided in overtime, smashing the league's seven-year-old record of 20. On one weekend alone, there were four overtime games. On three other weekends, there were three overtimes.
Of those 25 overtime games, 17 were settled by a field goal, seven by a touchdown, and one finished in a tie.
In a word: boring.
Teams that won the overtime coin toss this season were 16-8-1. Since 1994, when the kickoff was moved back to the 30-yard line, teams that won the overtime coin toss were 87-55-3.
There are several solutions (but only one good one). Either require a team to win by six points in overtime or move the kickoff back to the 35-yard line for overtime (during the first 20 years that overtime was used, the kickoff was made from the 35, and teams that won the coin toss won just half the games).
But the best solution is to adopt the college/high school overtime format. What could be better than giving each team the ball at the 25- or 10-yard line, allowing them either to score or give up the ball on downs, a turnover or a missed field goal. Each team gets an equal number of possessions. One option: If the teams are still tied after one possession, the next possession begins closer to the goal line.
NFL types are concerned that such a format will make games too long, but it is likely that both formats would require the same amount of time. Anyway, for sheer drama, the college format is difficult to top and is certainly better than the NFL's anticlimactic system.
The NFL has said it will review the overtime format during the offseason, but don't expect much in the way of change. After all, it took the league decades just to adopt college football's two-point conversion, which should have been a no-brainer. The two-point conversion, combined with the salary cap (and the resulting parity) have created the overtime trend.
"I don't think the current rules are unfair and, more importantly, our membership doesn't think so," NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said earlier this season. "The (competition) committee will look at alternatives, I'm sure. But I don't see any great sentiment to changing the rule."
Maybe teams can practice that coin toss call.
E-mail: drob@desnews.com