Americans and Canadians really get a rash from ties. Most of the rest of the world is OK with them.
The tiebreaker system in the NFL is crazy because with a 16 game season there’s just not enough variants in results. Without ties there’s only 17 possible season results with 32 teams your guaranteed ties in the standings so then you need ways to break them, and with a league where everybody doesn’t play everybody you need to start digging into odd stats (and eventually a coin toss). If you add ties in (I’m really for no regular season OT) and a “normal” point system (2 for a win 1 for a tie, 0 for losing) you get 33 possible standings results and the actual numerical possibility (though not exactly likely) of no ties. You also get an additional tiebreaker of wins over ties.
In the NFL, the problem has been exacerbated in recent years by the plague of parity. I think I’ve seen more playoff teams with 9-7 records (and worse) in the last 15 years than in my entire lifetime before that.
Americans like definitive results, if they are meaningless.
There is nothing more arbitrary in the world than a single-elimination playoff tournament. Yet, we judge careers based on the NFL playoffs (and the even more insane NCAA tournament - a single elimination tourney for 18 year old by which we judge the careers of 50 year old men).
I’m a Steeler fan so I’ll take it, but I always think back to that 2005 playoff game where Carson Palmer blew out his knee on the first play of the game. You play four months of football in order to have your season essentially decided on one random play.
Speak for yourself Yank. We Canadians never had a problem with regular season ties because there were none in the playoffs. Forcing a winner in regular season games achieves little.