LSU vs Alabama: Why the Overtime Format Ruined a Classic Defensive Battle

The purpose of the defense is to prevent the opposing offense from scoring. It's a relatively easy task to design, but one of the hardest to follow through on. 

Defenses are designed around every player supporting his teammates, and considering that offenses look to exploit any weaknesses they find, whether it be due to injuries, lack of experience or overall talent, one player failing on one play could be disastrous. 

Yesterday, both defenses performed admirably. They held each other to a grand total of 15 points, all of them through the kicking game. Both offenses struggled due to lack of cohesion, bad field position and the stalwart defense of the opposing squad. It was probably one of the best defensive matchups we've seen in years.

LSU achieved victory, though, by the luck of a coin toss going their way and holding Alabama's offense to no points in OT. It was extremely fortunate for the Tigers, who had somewhat struggled to contain Richardson and McCarron all night. 

The Alabama defense was then tasked with stopping a team that was already well within field-goal range. It became suddenly clear that the OT rules that have been used for years were preventing the perfect defensive game from finishing the way it should.

For any LSU fans out there, I am not criticizing your win. LSU won by the rules that we play by. I am simply going to observe that the way in which overtime is played is geared towards exciting offenses rather than stalwart defenses. 

Just consider the system of overtime. Both offenses start on the 25-yard line, which is only a 42-yard field goal. Any college kicker can make that in decent weather conditions. Alabama had the misfortune of acquiring a costly penalty, a sack and a bad play, which resulted in a perfect combination for enough loss of yards for their mediocre kicker to miss the 52-yard field goal.

The rules are pretty much giving you a field goal while making a touchdown the ultimate goal. Compare that to normal play, and you find that, overall, if your defense can hold the opposing offense, there will be no points scored instead of a highly probably three. 

The whole idea behind a more exciting game is based on the fact that teams score a lot more now a lot quicker and with a lot more ease. Defenses are slowly becoming less important to the extent that some teams play solely on the strategy of "we only have to score more," as compared to "we just have to stop their offense."

West Coast offenses have spread like wild fire, ending up in every conference somewhere. However, many SEC teams have retained the old-fashioned way of thinking in that "defense wins championships." Obviously, the last five years proves that saying has gotten them somewhere.

Alabama and LSU are two of the old-fashioned juggernauts who have stuck with strong defenses over crazy offenses. There classic defensive battle was going perfectly until we hit OT and the rules prevented that from continuing. 

Overtime regulations ruined what could be considered the best battle of defenses we've seen in ages. I'm not saying this is going to change any time soon, but we could have seen a much different outcome had the defenses been allowed the opportunity to hold offenses before they got into scoring range.

As great as the Alabama-LSU game was, realizing that it was ruined by such a seemingly minor fluke was really disappointing. Possibly the OT rules will be reanalyzed when the NCAA looks into a playoff system...who knows, it might not be just a dream.