I don’t talk much about foreign leagues here, but I was watching Jay DeMerit and Watford playing defending EPL champs Chelsea this morning.  It was my first view of Jay DeMerit outside of his recent US MNT cap.  DeMerit looked really good and at the 90th minute he and his team had shut out the defending champs.  It was exciting, I was thrilled to see a draw, but of course the game doesn’t end at 90 minutes.

The excitement that I had going into that final 90th minute for a nil-nil draw made me start thinking about sports and games that don’t end with an outright winner.  I assume these are not new ideas by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve never thought much about it before.  The popularity of soccer (or more appropriately the lack of) in the US could much be due to the fact that Americans need to have a winner.

In American football teams will play sudden death overtime if a game ends with an even score.  Whoever wins the OT coin toss gets the ball first, they can move down the field a little bit, kick a field goal, and they are considered the better team that day.  Does that team really deserve a victory?  Maybe they were the better team but were unlucky and people would agree they did deserve a victory.  Maybe the opposite was the case and a team that was seriously outplayed wins the coin toss and ends up winning the game because of it.  They could take a hint from the way the college game is played in the US, each team gets an equal chance to finish the game.

Other American sports are a little bit different.  In baseball both teams get an equal chance to score more runs.   Basketball adds on another 5 (or so) minute time period, giving each teams equal chances.  Hockey will play a set time period of sudden death, but it does offer each of the teams equal chance of winning because one team is not assigned to be in posession of the puck, they fight for it!  As a hockey fan I find the shoot-outs exciting to watch, but really the winner of a shoot-out probably doesn’t deserve a win any more than the other team.

I wonder what the obsession with needing a definite winner is.  If you play a game for a certain amount of time, innings, periods, quarters or halves, why can you not accept that maybe neither team deserves to be victorious?  If the game is not going to end at its defined ending time, what is the point of having that time defined.  Those games should just go on until one team throws in the towel, or maybe the fans could vote and decide when one team has earned victory.  I guess they could do away with the whole scoring system and just let the fans decide who played better.

Chelsea went on to score a couple minutes into stoppage time to get the 1-0 victory and take all 3 points.  Thats too bad for everyone other than Chelsea and their fans, but it sure is exciting when stuff like that happens.  I do wish it has been Jay DeMerit scoring a goal for Watford, but what would you expect from that game?  A nil-nil draw would have Watford fans celebrating and Chelsea fans crying.

Remember how the Trinidad-Tobago fans went crazy this summer when their team drew Sweeden in a scoreless draw?  I really doubt you ever see any Detroit Lions or Oakland Raider fans being happy about their team ending a game in a draw.

I guess my point in all this is that I really hope the MLS does not add something stupid like the hockey-style shootout they had in the first few seasons.  Sometimes neither team deserves to win, and other times neither team deserves to lose.