You Can Indeed Kiss Your Sister In The NFL

I'm really puzzled. I read earlier today that Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles was unaware until Sunday's tie game with the Bengals that NFL games can and do result in ties. To me, that seems like basic knowledge. And I didn't really start watching football until 1997. While it's certainly true that there are no ties in college football (McNabb was quarterback for Syracuse), he's been in the NFL since 1999. Surely this rule has come up once or twice over ten seasons in the league. Surely he's glanced at the win-loss column in the newspaper and wondered about that letter T next to the W and the L.

I don't mean to give him a hard time. He plays to win each and every time he's on the field. I have no doubt that this little detail played no part in the Eagles inability to defeat the (once again) hapless Bengals on Sunday. I'm merely puzzled. But just when I thought I was reading about one weird isolated incident, I learn that he's far from the only person on his team that doesn't know about the possibility of a tie.

In his defense, McNabb wasn't the only one oblivious to the rules. Several of his teammates were just as clueless. 

"Me and Greg Lewis were discussing it on the sideline, so we asked one of our trainers and he told us it ends in a tie," running back Correll Buckhalter said.

"I found out while we were in OT," rookie wideout DeSean Jackson said.

"I thought we kept playing," linebacker Omar Gaither said.

That's four teammates who also had no clue. I don't get it. Maybe Chunky Soup should start printing random NFL rules on the sides of their cans. Ex: "Did You Know? A safety is worth two points. Don't get sacked in your own endzone!!" Or... "Did You Know? In a playoff game or in the Super Bowl, there are no ties." Because Donovan didn't know that one either.

"I never knew in the professional ranks it would end that way. I hate to see what would happen in the Super Bowl and in the playoffs," McNabb said.

I'm not picking on him. I just thought it was weird that a seemingly obvious rule was absolutely foreign to a 10-year veteran of the game. Or rather, I thought it weird that I, a humble fan, knew a rule about his game that he didn't.

And that's worthy of a blog post.

[Edit to add: In defending his ignorance a bit, I'll say that there has only been one NFL game that resulted in a tie since Donovan McNabb has been in the league. Also, I don't have one in front of me, but I would hazard to guess that as long as a season has no tied games, the newspaper probably doesn't waste the space for a T-column.]