The importance of experiencing a tie

Save the goalpost - The importance of experiencing a tie

In February 1996, the NCAA adopted a rule requiring overtime in all Division 1 college football games.Prior to the 1996 regular season, a Division 1 football game could end in a tie forcing each team to realize how close they were to winning or how close they were to losing. The last time a tie occurred was a defensive gem when Wisconsin tied Illinois 3 to 3, thus ending these emotions that had historically accompanied a tie. It got me thinking. Is this rash of fans rushing the field after a regular season win, somehow connected to the absence of experiencing the emotions of a tie? 

How many times have fans rushed a field in college football? 

I couldn’t find a database that tracked fans rushing the field. There is not a stat that counts, a goal post was torn down or fans rushing the field. Instead, I ran with the assumption that newspaper clippings and quotes might give me some indications of the count I was looking for. Or, maybe an NCAA database of the issuance of fines could help. Regardless, a little prompt engineering using multiple LLM to these types of sources would help with accuracy. 

We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time. - Vince Lombardi

Within my hypothesis, could there be a correlation that showed that ending ties is connected to an increase in fans rushing the field? In no way am I decreasing the importance of fans rushing the field on a monumental occasion. Deserving, with Auburn beating Alabama in the 2013 “Kick Six” game, Auburn fans rushed the field. In 1982, the California Golden Bears played the Stanford Cardinal, when Stanford’s band famously stormed the field prematurely, believing their team had won. Among the chaos, California lateraled the ball five times on the kickoff return, resulting in Kevin Moen to run through the band, knocking over a trombone player, for the winning touchdown. Damn! Sometimes, the fans earned the rush.

When you beat Bama, you rush the field. You tear down goal posts. You jump to #1 in the polls. You celebrate. You should. The day you beat Bama is a momentous occasion. It’s a cause for celebration. It’s a storied moment that will go down in the history of your program. - unknown

If correlated, maybe there is something to learn about a fan base that can not accept a regular-season win with a more tempered control. The hypothesis would be that when we are limited to only experiencing the emotional bookends of only wins and losses, there is a tendency that one may over-exaggerate a win. Naturally, a tie would temper a fan base acceptance of a win. Nelson Rules, Test 8 states that a process is out of statistical control if eight consecutive points fall outside the 1-sigma band on either side of the mean. With just wins and losses, we are out of statistical control.

Trend how many times college football fans have rushed the field

A few things stood out to me in the results. Assuming that the student body starts all field rushes, it is fair to assume that the majority of the students that rushed the field since 2022 had never experienced or witnessed a tie in their lifetime. This “student body’s” lack of experiencing a tie is significant because of a lack of NFL fans rushing the field. The last time I found NFL fans storming the field was when the Buffalo Bills fans stormed the field and tore down the goalposts after the team defeated the Miami Dolphins on September 7, 1980. 1980! 

Continuing to look at the results, the majority of the years from 1980 to 2021 the results showed roughly one field rush per season. Another data point that was interesting was the spike in fans rushing the field in 1996 compared to previous years. You may think that with the introduction of overtime in 1996, the spike was all of the excitement that came from this new way to win. Nope. Of the 49 overtime games in I-A and I-AA in 1996, I could not find any where fans rushed the field. Even with eight going into more than three overtimes.  

Field Rush 1996 

• Arizona State vs. Nebraska The Arizona State Sun Devils defeated the top-ranked and two-time defending national champion Nebraska Cornhuskers with a 19–0 shutout (September 21, 1996), and ecstatically rushed the field. 

• Following a 24–21 victory over the No. 1 ranked Florida Gators (November 30, 1996):, Florida State Seminoles fans rushed the field at Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee. 

• Tennessee fans rushed the field after the Volunteers' 24-17 victory over Alabama (October 26, 1996) which was a significant win that broke the Crimson Tide's nine-year winning streak against Tennessee. 

  
  

The importance of a tie

The data may show that individuals need to feel what victory feels like, and just as important they must experience a loss so they strive to avoid the experience again. But within the wins and losses that we experience in sports and in everyday life, we need to also experience what a tie feels like. 

This analysis reminds me that tie is the most misunderstood outcome. It lacks the thrill of victory and the sting of defeat. Instead, it concludes with both teams demanding a reflection. A tie teaches humility, while balancing pride with disappointment. It challenges to couple the emotions of ambition and acceptance. A tie tempers your emotions, and shows that composure at a peak may be the truest form of control. 

The data shows that without ties, we must rethink confidence and the portraying a each win is expected. Choosing not to rush the field, even when it may be one of the biggest wins in years or an epic ending, is a sign of confidence and presence. It represents a cultural shift or a statement that success was no longer something so rare to lose control over, but rather an expectation to be handled with composure. By staying in the stands and learning to respect the outcome, fans can show that they can celebrate and intend to win again.

I hope our fans had a good day, I appreciate them not rushing the field. So, um, but I think, not to take away from extra security that probably helped. But, to me that’s really cool that you get to a place, at a program, that you do beat the number three team in the country and you don’t rush the field. Because, you do what you are supposed to do. And, that's to win the game. And so, that makes me happy that this program has gotten to that place. - Lane Kiffin

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