I’m trying to think of a way that you could have a true sudden death overtime in football that would neutralize the advantage of being the team that gets the ball first. In other words: what constraint(s) would you have to put on the offense for the opening possession of OT such that the teams would be indifferent as to whether they win the coin toss or not?

For example, starting field position: let’s say there’s no OT kickoff; the team with the first possession starts at X yard line. How deep in your own territory would X have to be such that you’d think twice about wanting the ball first? Your own 10? 5? 1?

Or you could do something with downs: the offense on the opening possession only has 3 downs to work with instead of 4. Or even 2! Would you still want the ball first?

How about yards to go? Say you have to get 12 yards to get a first down, or 15, or 20. At what yard-to-gain number would the advantage of being on offense first disappear?

Or even: what if the offense had to play a man down on that first drive, 10 vs. 11 (or 11 vs. 12). Is there any starting field position (outside of immediate field goal range) where you’d still definitely rather be getting the ball first?

You get the idea. And obviously you could implement some combination of any or all of the above constraints. Point is, there’s got to be some way you could handicap the opening possession of OT such that you neutralize the get-the-ball-first advantage.

(You could make this really interesting by doing it I-cut-you-choose style: the team that wins the OT coin toss declares the conditions for the opening possession, then the other team decides whether they want to play offense or defense.)

I’m totally in favor of the i-cut-you-choose setup.

It would likely be right around own-20 that you would be indifferent.  So, if team A proposes “own 25”, then team B would choose to be on offense.  If team A proposes “own 10”, then team B would choose to be on defense.

The great thing is that every game should have a different breakeven point depending on the particular teams.

Right, and depending on wind/weather/stadium conditions that would affect FG-kicking, etc. I-cut-you-choose is the perfect mechanism for handling those variables and keeping it fair. Plus the “cutting the cake” moment would be a great bit of theater! Much more intriguing than a coin toss.

I like I-cut-you-choose.  I’m not sure whether I prefer it to a scenario that I think we’ve discussed here before where each team bids a yard line on which they’d be happy to take the ball.  So, one team says that they’d be willing to take the ball on the 15 yard-line but if the other team is willing to take it on the 10 yard-line they get the ball.