Remember when the Patriots beat the Chiefs in overtime of the AFC Championship Game?

Remember how New England won a coin flip and took possession of the ball, then scored?

Remember how Pat Mahomes sat on the sidelines and didn’t even get into the game?

The Chiefs offered a proposal to change the overtime rules, but it’s not gonna happen:

It’s a dumb rule. I’m not listening to any arguments otherwise. There is no reason why both teams should not be given an offensive possession in overtime, and anyone who says, “WeLL tHe deFeNsE jUsT nEeDs to geT a StOp” gets muted, permanently banned from commenting on the issue. That stance is flimsy, because those two phases of the game are not equal, as I explained in this column from a few months back, after the jump:

The best way to illustrate what I’m talking about is to take the ridiculous NFL overtime rules and apply them to other sports.

Take tennis, for instance. Imagine Roger Federer wins a coin toss and elects to serve. Rafael Nadal doesn’t get to serve, Federer hits four aces, and the game is over.

Are you going to sit here and tell me that Nadal should have broken his serve? No, because breaking serve is measurably harder than holding serve. That’s why players alternate service in a tiebreaker.

….

If a coin flip is going to determine an offensive possession or service, then the fairest way to write the rules is to allow the opposing team an opportunity to match. Instead we’re rolling out tired defenses against elite quarterbacks in a sport where the offense is typically on the front foot, especially in the modern day NFL, where recent rule changes have proven advantageous to offensive units.

The college overtime rules are perfect because both your offensive and defensive units are involved in the extra periods in an alternating scenario that is competitively balanced. The NFL overtime rules are not, which sometimes results in 50% of the players not even getting on the field. We didn’t even get to see Pat Mahomes lead an overtime drive down the field, and, likewise, if the Chiefs won the coin toss and scored, we would have been robbed of an opportunity to see Tom Brady do the same thing.

Even Jeffrey Lurie is on the right side of the debate, saying this in March:

I would like to change overtime. We talked a lot to the competition committee about changing overtime. There’s a lot of ways to do it. Personally, I don’t like the shortened overtime in the regular season because I think it gives even more value to the winner of the coin toss. So if you get the ball first, and you have a seven minute drive or nine minute drive, that’s taking up 70% to 90% of the time period of regular season overtime now. It makes no sense to me. Some day I hope we can get that changed.

People will also say, “well you have four quarters to win the game in regulation.” Yeah? So. what? Because a team didn’t win in regulation, that justifies shitty overtime imbalance? That’s not an argument either. This was the AFC Championship Game, not some throwaway week three Thursday Night Football game.

If we’re not seeking competitive balance in America’s most popular game, then what exactly are we doing?