Spot and Choose

June 12, 2021

So, I saw a promo for football games from something called The Spring League... being televised on FOX. That’s something new.

Actually, it isn’t. The Spring League has been operating since 2017. Who knew? They still promote the fact that Bills legend Fred Jackson and former Heisman winner Johnny Manziel once played in it. I’m not so football starved that I’ll watch. But there is something worth paying attention to.

*Johnny Manziel playing for the South Team – TSL April 7, 2018*

The league’s tie-breaking system was originally proposed by the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens. It is being tested here. It’s called Spot and Choose. At the end of regulation, the winner of a coin toss gets to pick the line of scrimmage. The other team gets to choose who gets the ball. Consider that. Something that requires real thought. And it’s totally fair. And that’s not all. The game either ends in sudden death. First team to score. Or… the overtime has a fixed clock.

The Ravens proposal gives you seven and a half minutes. Half a quarter to sort this out.

It doesn’t seem like an experiment that’ll make its way to the NFL anytime inside of a decade. But Spot and Choose is the best idea to hit the pike since green M&Ms.

Category: Misc, Press Box
Tag: Baltimore Ravens, Bill Pucko, Johnny Manziel, Spot & Choose, TSL, Unfinished Business

Published by Bill Pucko

Bill Pucko has spent over three decades as a broadcast journalist working in television, radio and print. He was the featured sportscaster on Rochester’s YYN and WHEC-TV, awarded the Rochester Press and Radio Club’s Sportscaster of the Year Award three times and inducted onto the Frontier Field Walk of Fame in 2006. Bill is a co-founder of Classy Wolf Media, a television and video production company currently syndicating two weekly sports programs, The High School Sports Beat and The Press Box, on WHAM-TV and FOX Rochester. View all posts by Bill Pucko