The force that is killing the football world as we know it

America loves football. If baseball is America's pastime, then football is the mistress that America runs off with every time baseball isn't looking. In fact, if it weren't for a few blemishes, America would divorce baseball and run away to Tahiti with football. The biggest blemish on the face of football: the overtime system.

Now I realize perfectly well that there are two systems, one for the NFL and the other for college, which in itself is illogical and pointless. The sport should only have one system for both levels. The only problem is that while both of the current formats have positive aspects, they both fail to provide a truly satisfying end to a close game.

Let's examine the college system first. The first and most obvious positive factor is that both teams get a chance to touch the ball on offense. This means that the outcome of the game is decided on more than a 50-50 toss of a coin. While fair to both teams this system has a major flaw: It almost completely ignores a full third of the game - special teams. While I admit that field goals do bring a bit of special teams into the equation, even extra points are ignored after the third overtime session. It makes no sense to place the ball at the 25-yard line and ignore kickoffs and punts once the game comes down to the wire. The game isn't played by placing the ball at the 25-yard line; why start playing that way once overtime starts?

The NFL system isn't much better. The use of a full kickoff makes field position important, meaning that return specialists like Devin Hester actually matter once overtime rolls around. Of course, special teams are only important so long as the team with the first possession doesn't score. While sudden death makes the end of the game exciting, it relies far too much on pure chance. In the current system, 28 to 29 percent of the teams that win the coin toss go on to win the game. That means that nearly a third of the time the game is decided not by play, but by the way a coin lands on the field.

There are two ways to fix overtime in football, each with their own benefits. The simplest way would be simply to play a full 15-minute period with the winner being whichever team scores more points during that time. If the two teams remain tied after the period, they would simply play another until the winner is decided. While some would argue that this would make games absurdly long, NHL games that are played under a similar format that have gone into double or triple overtime only get more exciting as time passes. And besides, who wouldn't love an excuse to watch even more football? In this system, the game is intact: Both teams would continue to play football, real football, until a winner was decided.

While this format of playing full overtime periods until one team wins would be the fairest system, it is also incredibly unlikely to be implemented by both college and the NFL due to the NFL's love affair with sudden death. This is where a second option comes in.

This second format would be a modified sudden-death format. If a team won the coin toss and then went on to score on the first possession of overtime, the team that scored would then proceed with a normal kick off. If the second team isn't able to score, then the game ends. If they are able to match the score of the first team, the second team would then proceed to kick the ball off and standard sudden death rules would apply for the remainder of the game. If they top the first team, they win. If a team doesn't score on the first possession, then normal sudden death rules would apply.

This second format includes aspects of the current NFL and college systems, but eliminates both of the current systems' faults. It gives both teams a chance to get their offense on the field, while at the same time incorporating special teams into the overtime period. Since it combines the two current systems, both the NFL and college should have no problem switching over to this new format.

Now all we need to do is to get the two ruling bodies of the sport of football to agree to the change, pack our bags, and fly off to Tahiti … after the World Series of course.