The Gettysburg Address is 277 words, and finds elemental, eternal truths from the most complex of human endeavors.
The NFL’s overtime rules run more than four times as long, 1120 words, and turn the simplest dang thing possible — how to figure out who wins a football game — into a bewildering array of directives and sub-articles so complicated that the IRS nods its approval.
Put it this way: when you’ve got different sets of rules for regular season and playoffs — or when you have to put the rules onscreen before every overtime, just to explain yet again to the viewers at home what the hell’s happening — you’ve got a flawed system.