Stephen Colbert has some new ideas for NFL to replace the coin toss
Spin the bottle! Groundhog Day! Essays!
By
Jared Dubin
•
2 min read
Even after two Hail Mary passes sent the game to overtime, last weekend's Packers-Cardinals game still somehow got crazier. How? The coin flip, of course. Referee Clete Blakeman flipped the coin in the air, and it landed on heads, but it didn't actually flip over, so he flipped it again (which the NFL said he didn't need to do).
Aaron Rodgers wasn't happy about the whole flip thing. Also not happy: Stephen Colbert, host of The Late Show, who has some new ideas about how we can decide who gets the ball for overtime instead. After all, "Coin tosses aren't supposed to be some random act you can't predict." Right?
Colbert does, however, like Aaron Rodgers' strategy of calling the side opposite of what is facing up when the ref is getting ready to flip. "If you do that, you'll win 50 percent of the coin tosses, every time."
But back to Stephen's ideas. Let's walk through the things he think might work better than an act as random as flipping a coin.
1. Spin the bottle
This somehow seems even more random than a coin flip. I know it's not actually possible to be *more* random than something with a 50-50 shot, but still. Just for the visual of the team captains sitting on the ground around a bottle (the NFL can even sell the rights to which beer company will have their bottle used for each game!) and waiting for it to stop spinning, this might be worth it.
2. Guess how much a bottle of Crest toothpaste costs
I'm not sure if this more benefits captains that have children (because they presumably have to buy more toothpaste, more often) or captains that are single (because they presumably have to buy their own toothpaste, every time). Either way, it's probably not a 50-50 proposition. Not sure if I like it.
3. Each captain writes a 500-word essay on why their team deserves the ball
Finally! An area where Ryan Fitzpatrick is the perfect quarterback to have.
4. Use the Groundhog Day groundhog
The Groundhog predicts whether or not there will be six more weeks of winter. I'm not sure how this can be applied to deciding who should get the ball to start overtime of NFL games. Might want to rethink this one.
5. Have a ref say he will cut the ball in half, then whichever team volunteers to give the ball to the other, is the ball's mother
Perfect.
