diehard03 said:
whats wrong with just giving both teams a possession?
In regards to your no OT in the regular season:
Ties are un-american. That is not an exaggeration. There is not a major american sport that is structured to regularly end in ties. Its impossible in baseball, hockey, basketball, college football, tennis, golf, etc. etc. The NFL allows for ties, but they are exceedingly rare (1.5 per season on average), if you remove OT from the equation however you'd go from a game ending in a tie .5% of the time up to roughly 14% of the time. That's two ties a week and two ties per season per team. You ready to concede to that kind of NFL? I'm not.
In regards to what's wrong with giving both teams a possession:
Imagine a game where the coin toss winner accepts the ball and does not score a field goal or touchdown. The loser of the coin toss merely needs to score by any means in order to win the game, they no longer have the requirement of running aggressive plays for an entire drive in an attempt to score as many points as possible, they merely have to get to the opposing team's 35 in order to win.
Look no further than the Falcons in the Super Bowl to see how going for the end zone can negatively impact your scoring chances. They had the ball 1st & 10 at NE's 22 yard line, a nearly guaranteed field goal for their kickers. Instead of locking up the win they continue to go for the end zone (something the receiving team in OT would be obligated to do) and they end up losing a yard on first down, 12 yards on second down, and 10 yards due to a penalty ultimately knocking them out of field goal range and leading them to lose the game.
You're trading one advantage for another.
You're all coming to overtime with the impression that it's a brand new game, it's not. It's a continuation of a game and the goal is the same, stop the opposing team from scoring and score points yourself. The rules are inherently going to (slightly) favor one team over the other.