Fumble - Use in Place of Opening Coin Toss

Use in Place of Opening Coin Toss

The XFL, a competing pro league which played its sole season in 2001, used a fumble recovery instead of a coin toss to decide which team would get to choose whether to kick off or receive at the opening of the game and before overtime. A player from each team would sprint, alongside the other, toward a loose ball at the middle of the field, and whoever was able to gain possession won the right for their team to decide.

The idea was that such a key element of the game would be decided by a test of playing skill, not chance. Because of a high rate of injury in these events, the idea never caught on in any other level of football, and the coin toss remains the standard.

Read more about this topic:  Fumble

Famous quotes containing the words place, opening, coin and/or toss:

    Summer is different. We now have breakfast together, for example ... it hasn’t happened in so long that we’re not sure how to go about it. So we bump into each other in the kitchen. I never saw Ozzie and Harriet bump into each other in the kitchen—not once. Ozzie knew his place was at the table, while Harriet knew that her place was at the stove.
    Nathan Cobb (20th century)

    And then ... he flung open the door of my compartment, and ushered in “Ma young and lovely lady!” I muttered to myself with some bitterness. “And this is, of course, the opening scene of Vol. I. She is the Heroine. And I am one of those subordinate characters that only turn up when needed for the development of her destiny, and whose final appearance is outside the church, waiting to greet the Happy Pair!”
    Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)

    It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.
    Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)

    If certain, when this life was out—
    That your’s and mine, should be—
    I’d toss it yonder, like a Rind,
    And take Eternity—
    Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)