Fans watched as both teams fought for the higher score. We were in the sixth inning, and the score was tied. The game went into extra innings, after the seventh inning the score was still equal, the next inning rolled around, but still nobody was leading. All of the sudden the umpires called the game off. Everybody was furious, after all it was the championship game. Both teams were heartbroken. We put in all this time and effort to win this one game, just for it to go to waste. The trophies were put away, not given out to either team. Not a single person on that field was happy, not the coaches, not the players, the fans, no one, everybody was furious. I am just one of the many victims that championship ties have affected. In my experiences with tied championship games my team and I have felt very disappointed. Ties hurt much worse than a loss. The problem , as I see it, is that tied championship games are demotivating to the players. You may think that ties really aren’t bad because neither team loses, but failure is a lesson that all of us need to learn, we need to learn that a loss is something to build off of, to reach our end goal. After the game is called off and ends as a tie the whole vibe of the team is destroyed. Players have their heads down mumbling to themselves about how they could have done better. This occurs at all ages, College Football clearly sees it considering they changed the rules in 1996 to make sure after every game there is a winner and a loser. Other sports have done the same, the NHL is experiencing this issue also. Then came shootouts which cure the disease of ties for the sport of hockey.
Luckily, like shootouts, there are things to be done to prevent ties. One being the simple answer that we can allow the games to play out till the end, it would take some more time, but things like this need to be done in order to keep players motivated . Other solutions being the use of rules like the NFL where in OT there is a sudden death where the next touchdown, field goal, or safety wins. Or if it really comes down to it stop the game, play some other time, and continue where we left off.
The problem of championship ties is quite easy to solve. The issue is that the players that are experiencing the heartbreaking demotivation, don’t have a say in the rules that can be made, because after all they’re “ Just the people playing the game,”.