#8. Ties | The 10 Worst Things About Sports

In this addition to my list of the top 10 worst things about sports, I rant about my hatred for ties. Please feel free to disagree or vent about your disgust of draws in the comment section below, and as always, thank you for reading!

Ties have been a part of sports for centuries, yet as a sports fan, I loathe ties and question their existence. By the way, I know "draws" is probably the preferred term for a tie, but here in the U.S., "draws" are a slang term for underwear, so I'll mainly stick with a tie.

A sport is a competition, and competitions are won or lost. Have you ever been part of a raffle where they accidentally drew the names of two different people so no one gets the prize? I didn't think so.

Have you been a top applicant for a job and instead of giving it to you or the other leading candidate you're both passed over because they can't decide between the two of you and they leave the position unfilled? Right, that would never happen, so can anyone please justify ties in sports?

Would You Kiss Your Sister?

As a young red-blooded American, I grew up being told that I should hate several things about sports, two of those were ties and soccer, and only the former do I still have negative feelings about. "Ties are like kissing your sister," I'd hear on television shows (like The Simpsons) and when playing little league baseball and other random sports.

While playing with the other kids in my neighborhood, we would come up with elaborate "tiebreakers" just to avoid having to call a draw. It didn't matter if we were playing tic tac toe or pick-up (an impromptu game) basketball -- no ties were allowed!

Maturing (in age at least) hasn't changed my aversion to ties. It boils down to the concept of a tie -- I would personally rather lose, know why I lost, and then work to improve rather than tie. A tie is like a "mutual breakup," both sides may say that it was amicable, but deep down inside both know that one of them wanted it more. Even in a tie, one team played better, and that team should be rewarded for their achievement, regardless of how long it takes to determine the winner.

The Upside of Ties

For the teams involved, the upside of a tie is simple -- it's better than a loss in terms of where it puts you in the league's standings. But as we've seen recently In the NFL, teams desperately try to avoid ties at the end of overtime even if it results in a loss. Several weeks ago we saw the Indianapolis Colts go for it on 4th down in overtime with less than a minute left when the better move would have been to punt. They failed to convert, and after a completion by the Texans, Houston kicked a winning field goal to end the game. Instead of playing smart and ending the game with the tie, the Colts chose to go after victory, and although it was a stupid decision, I commend their blind courage.

In soccer leagues around the world, ties are important as they give a team a single point while wins give them three (like in the EPL). It takes three ties to equal a single victory, so wouldn't that team be better off being forced to win or lose? The chances of that team winning at least one of those three close games are extremely high, and fans in attendance and watching the match on television would be able to walk away knowing what team was better on that day.

Sports Without Ties

The majority of sports played in America and around the world cannot end in a tie. Baseball (in the regular season and playoffs), basketball, college and high school football, volleyball, golf, tennis, and the list goes on, all cannot end in a tie. And guess what? The games that could have ended in a tie but didn't are some of the greatest games in the history of that sport!

Ties deprive us of fantastic finishes. We would miss walk-off home runs, long overtime thrillers, and marathon games where we're left on the edge of our seat for hours. Is a single point really worth the tradeoff of an incredible overtime finish? I for one don't think so.