Todd Golden: TODD AARON I'll admit it ... NFL ties kind of do it for me

Sep. 14—I'm back from my COVID-19 exile, so I thought I'd share a deep, dirty little secret. Now, I'm not normally one to publicly share my inner-most thoughts, but I feel compelled to let it all out there. I don't feel the need to hide it anymore.

Are you ready for this? OK, but be prepared to be weirded out. Here goes ...

I like NFL ties. No, wait, I kind of love NFL ties.

Ewwww!

I feel better for getting it off my chest. Yes, I'll shout it from a mountain — NFL ties kind of do it for me.

Ties are in the air locally, of course, after the Indianapolis Colts knotted the Houston Texans on Sunday by a 20-20 count. It's the first T the franchise has put on the board since the Colts moved to the Hoosier State in 1984.

I'm sure you're asking yourself ... can I explain why on God's green Earth would I have a fetish for ties? Can I! Let me count the ways!

I guess it starts with the simple idea that they don't happen very often, though more on that in a bit.

If there's a tie at all in a given NFL season, there hasn't been more than two in any season since the NFL began regular season overtime in 1974, they come out of the clear, blue sky. You can't predict a tie. I don't bet enough to know, but I imagine successfully betting on a tie in a NFL game would be quite lucrative.

A NFL tie is like getting to see a position player pitch in a Major League Baseball game or a lunky center bank in a 3-point shot. To embrace a tie is to embrace the weird ... and I'm all for that.

That's why, while I love ties when they happen, don't misunderstand me. I don't want more ties. I like that they're a fairly rare occurrence. If we had more ties, they'd get boring and lose their appeal. No, a tie or two per season is enough for me to be sated.

I think another part of the appeal is that it's an accidental outcome. Maybe up until it's too late to avoid a loss, as it was for the Texans late in overtime on Sunday, not one team has ever taken the field in a NFL game with a tie even in the most remote corner of their minds.

It is not a part of any gameplan. It's not an outcome that is particularly welcomed. Two teams have to try very hard, accidentally, to create a tie, and I think that's funny.

And that's the thing about NFL ties — there is often quite a bit of comedy involved to get there.

Many do have the mundane veneer of a missed field goal. The Colts threw Rodrigo Blankenship to the wolves on Tuesday for missing a 41-yarder in overtime ... as if he was the only one culpable as the Colts sleep-walked their way to a 20-3 deficit against a sad-sack Texans team. Kickers, forever the scapegoats.

I went back and looked at the history of NFL ties — hey, you have your turn-ons, I have mine — and at least 14 of them turned on a missed overtime field goal or two. Who says missed field goals can't be funny anyway? If they don't involve your team (or your betting slip), they're generally pretty hilarious.

There's some NFL comedy gems in those post-1974 ties, some involving NFL greats.

—Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton threw an interception at the 1-yard line late in a 1976 tie against the Rams. One of many overtime ties that had their genesis in ill-timed turnovers.

—St. Louis Cardinals kicker Neil O'Donoghue missed three field goals in overtime in a world-renowned craptastic Monday Night Football game against the Giants in 1983. Among his misses was a 20-yarder.

—In 1997, the Giants and Washington tied. The overtime might not have been necessary if Washington quarterback Gus Frerotte hadn't knocked himself out of the game in regulation by head-butting the stadium wall in a touchdown celebration.

—In 2008, the Bengals and Eagles tied and Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb admitted after the game he didn't know there were ties in the NFL.

You can't write these comedy gems. If there were no ties, we'd be robbed of some harmless yucks ... and who wants that?

Deep down? I think I also enjoy ties because they have such an disruptive effect on everything. Ties are the Bugs Bunny of football, instigating all manner of exasperation.

Their effect on the standings alone tends to drive people to distraction. Wait, so we're a half-game ahead? Or are we a half-game behind? What the hell? I was told there would be no math?

You'd think I'd be scarred by ties, given that in my first season of following the NFL, a tie cost my favorite team, the Packers, the 1978 NFC Central division title.

That 8-7-1 mark (hey, this was the best record the Packers had in my first 11 years as a fan, don't judge me!) haunts from the distant past, but I don't blame ties. I blame the Packers for not defending two fourth-down regulation passes against the Vikings and Ahmad Rashad on a stupid game-tying touchdown with 10 seconds left. I mean, for the love of ... OK, I'm getting distracted.

Witness late season tiebreaker scenarios when they toss a tie into the mix. Last season, if the Chargers and Raiders had tied in the season finale, all hell would have broken loose in terms of AFC playoff participation.

Ultimately, it went down to the last play of overtime, but they didn't tie — leaving me in a post-holiday funk where I questioned the existence of Santa Claus — but they probably should have, because if they had tied? Both would have made the playoffs. As it was, the Raiders couldn't resist the temptation to knock out their rivals.

Most of all? I love ties because people utterly lose it overreacting to them. Ties are viewed through the same prism as swearing in church. Folks recoil in elemental horror as if they're facing down a zombie apocalypse.

We live in a world where war rages in Ukraine, where the climate is out of our control, and people will brush those worldly matters off to absolutely, positively blow their stack if a score ends equally.

We like black-and-white, clean outcomes, but ties are so gloriously gray ... and then they make people see red. For those, like me, who think too many fans treat the NFL with the seriousness of a heart attack instead of something fun? Knowing that ties wind those folks up is delicious.

A tie is a perfectly legitimate outcome — to share the spoils, to have two teams fight to a draw, how is that illegitimate? (I can hear it now. "You would say that, SOCCER BOY!")

Then you get into the scapegoating and the lame-brained ideas to avoid ties (Let's play forever! College overtime! There's nothing gimmicky about that!) and it's just a cavalcade of overreaction.

And that's when I realize that maybe my fetish isn't so much that I love ties so much as I enjoy watching people lose their minds over something so inconsequential.

And here's the news ... with NFL overtime as it is now? We probably will have a tie or two more per season.

Since the NFL can't stick with a rule and leave it alone, we've gone from sudden death overtime, deemed unfair if you never got the ball, to sudden death only in the case of a touchdown. But then? If you trade field goals, the game goes on longer. NFL players, concerned about both short-term and long-term health concerns, put the kibosh on the former 15-minute overtime. Now? They're 10 minutes long.

So, more rules in place in overtime + more possessions + less time? You know what that means?

Ties! Ha, ha! Yes!

Todd Golden is sports editor of the Tribune-Star. He can be reached at (812) 231-4272 or todd.golden@tribstar.com. Follow Golden on Twitter at @TribStarTodd.