NFL Referee Ed Hochuli’s 57-second explanation of the new NFL overtime rules … in verse.

With the score tied
at the end of regulation
we will go into overtime

There are special
overtime
rules
in the playoffs

Both teams get an opportunity
to possess the football
with one exception

That one exception
is a touchdown
always wins the game

So if a team
that
gets
the opening kickoff
scores
a
touchdown
on their first possession
the game is over
at that point

If the team
that first gets the ball
kicks a field goal
the other team
will have an
opportunity
to possess the football

And then
we are
essentially
in
sudden
death

If the first team
that
gets the football
does not
score
we will go into
sudden
death

The second team
will then
have the
opportunity
to possess the ball
and
the first team to score
even if it’s
just
by
three points
will win

Timing rules
are as if
we were starting
a
new
game

We will use
regular timing rules

And replay
all replay
will be
conducted from the booth

The coaches
do not
have challenges

New York
It’s your call
What’s your call?

Ali wasn't just larger than life. He was larger than legend. (Phillip Leonian/SI)

Muhammad Ali turned 70 on Monday, and it prompts this question: Who among today’s sports stars will be the toughest to explain to future generations? Who will be the athlete who, years and years from now, will have us spluttering and shouting at some young and clueless kid, until finally we are left only with, “I guess you had to be there”?

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History does not favor a Super Bowl win for Tom Brady and the Patriots. (AP)

The New England Patriots are trying to do something that, best I can tell, has never been done in NFL history. They are trying to become the first outdoor team to win a Super Bowl with a great offense and a lousy defense, at least by the statistics. I have no idea if they can pull it off.

In looking back through the Super Bowl years, it seems that only two teams — the 2009 Saints and the 2006 Colts — have won a Super Bowl with a statistically great offense and a statistically lousy defense. I’ll use points scored and points allowed as a simple barometer for offense and defense*.

*Though those stats obviously are about MORE than offense and defense.

• The Saints scored the most points in the NFL in 2009 and gave up the 20th-most.

• The Colts scored the second-most in 2006 and gave up the 23rd-most.

No other Super Bowl winner has had a disparity quite like that. Heck, only three Super Bowl losers — Arizona in 2008 (third in points, 28th in points allowed), the 1991 Bills (second in points, 19th in points allowed), and the 1988 Bengals (first in points, 16th in points allowed) — have had such a jolting imbalance.

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So here’s a little peek into how things work in the real world. For a long time, big-time college football fans from all over have been protesting, screaming, complaining and railing against the establishment because there is no playoff. Columnists have written screeds. Authors have written books. High-profile coaches have given speeches. Fans have expressed extreme outrage. Polls have shown overwhelming support for a playoff. This has gone on for decades.

Now, I believe, college football fans will get what we want. College football will have a playoff very soon.

Why? Exactly. Because Alabama and LSU played an intensely boring football game on Monday night.

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Morris jumped from 53.5% of the vote in 2011 to 66.7% this year. (Tom DiPace/SI)

My predictions so rarely come true that I find it comforting, when I actually get one right, to pause and be awed by the sheer unlikeliness of it. This time around, I predicted that Jack Morris would take a huge jump forward in the Hall of Fame voting in 2012 — I said that his vote total could even get into the high 60s.

Well, sure enough, Jack Morris jumped from 53.5% of the vote in 2011 all the way up to 66.7% in 2012. High 60s. I was hardly the only person to make this prediction, but, again, I’m going to bask in it. I think Morris did enough this year — I really believe that he will get elected to the Hall of Fame next year. I will get into all that in a few minutes.

First, I’m going to give you more than you wanted to know about Hall of Fame voting. I find Morris’ climb in the voting — from a low of 19.6% in his second ballot, all the way up to the shadow of the Hall of Fame in his 13th — absolutely fascinating. And it made me go back and look at some of the other players who climbed from low vote totals to the Hall of Fame. That led me to look at every Hall of Fame ballot since 1966, when the writers went back to voting every year. And THAT look back led me to break down the Hall of Fame votes, player by player, in a way that would get me locked up in a padded cell in most countries.

But, hey, I did it, so I might as well share what I found. I’ll warn you again: It’s more than you wanted to know.

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Over time, Larkin's greatness has become apparent. (Reuters)

So, in honor of Barry Larkin’s election into the Hall of Fame, I have been thinking a lot about what we mean when we say that a player FEELS like a Hall of Famer. I call it the GF — the Gut Factor.

Barry Larkin, as great a player as he was, did not have a particularly high GF in his playing day. People watching him play for most of his career appreciated that he was a good player, don’t get me wrong. He made a lot of All-Star Teams. He won an MVP. He got a big contract. He wasn’t underappreciated. But, at least in my memory, people did not seem to think, Wow, I’m watching a future Hall of Famer here. You rarely heard him called “Future Hall of Famer Barry Larkin.”

Why not? Low Gut Factor? And what is the Gut Factor, anyway? Where does it come from? Why do some players have it, while other, better players do not?

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It’s all well and good to say that the next three baseball Hall of Fame ballots will be “unprecedented.” I’ve written that a few times, and it sounds good.

Next year’s ballot will include: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, Craig Biggio, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza and Kenny Lofton.

The 2014 ballot will include: Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, Mike Mussina and Jeff Kent.

The 2015 ballot will include: Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz and Gary Sheffield.

Yes, that flood of talent and controversy FEELS unprecedented — and in some ways that’s true. It certainly is a deep run of great players, and a few of them — especially Bonds and Clemens — are connected to PEDs in a way that unquestionably will affect the way the voters judge their careers. I have written before that in many ways the voters — and I am one of them — will be trying to determine the soul of the Hall of Fame.

But I realize now that I fell victim to one of the classic blunders. I overlooked history.

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The 1998 Kansas City Chiefs were the least-disciplined pro football team I have ever seen. They were probably the least-disciplined team I’ve ever seen on any level — NFL, Canadian, Arena, college, high school, Pee-Wee, Electronic — but I don’t want to exaggerate things. I have seen some pretty undisciplined Electronic Football teams — those players go wherever they want.

Those Chiefs, looking back, came by their lack of discipline in a most human way. You have to understand: The 1990s Chiefs were excellent football teams. They made the playoffs every year but one from 1990 to 1997, and they would have made it even that one year, 1996, if Morten Andersen could have made, like, a seven-yard field goal.*

*It was actually a 30-yard field goal.

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There once lived a fascinating man named Ferdinand Cole Lane, who for much of his life went by the initials “F.C.” because, well, his name was Ferdinand Cole.

F.C. Lane lived to be 98 years old, and in his long life did a great many things. He wrote a book about insects, another about trees, another about flowers, another about mountains, another about lakes*, another about the earth’s grandest rivers. He taught journalism. He taught history. He wrote poetry. He lived, for a time, in a Canadian log cabin. He once traveled across the Atlantic Ocean in steerage for the experience. He was married to the same woman for 70 years, and 10 months after he died in 1984, his wife Emma passed away.

*He begins his book about lakes — “The World’s Great Lakes” — like so: “Lakes!” No one could charge F.C. Lane with a lack of enthusiasm.

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How many MVPs would Ruth have won if the award had been given out in his heyday? (AP)

As you might imagine, I did not plan on writing a 7,000-word post on MVPs. This was supposed to just be a two-paragraph aside about Babe Ruth in my last Hall of Fame post. But, you know, sometimes these things get out of hand.

The starting point was this: Babe Ruth is, more or less, incomparable. I mean that literally — it’s basically pointless to compare any player in baseball history to him. Satchel Paige is like this, too, for different reasons. Ruth was a great pitcher AND hitter. And he so thoroughly dominated his era. It seems to me that he will ALWAYS be the best player in baseball history, no matter who comes around. This makes him unique in sports, in my opinion. In football, I think it’s possible for a player to come along whom the majority will decide is better than anyone before him. It’s obviously true in basketball — the “greatest player in basketball history” fluctuated many times between Russell and Chamberlain, to West and Robertson, to Kareem to Larry, and Magic to Jordan, and there are people now throwing Kobe and LeBron into the conversation. In hockey, it will be tough for anyone to ever be better than Gretzky to moderate hockey fans — the Great One certainly seems the greatest ever to me — but I know intense fans who insist RIGHT NOW that Gretzky isn’t the best ever.*

*This has been explained to me at great length — stuff about how Gretzky only played one side of the ice, how the sport has changed and would never allow him to just stand behind the net, and so on — but to be honest, I’ve never really understood it. I like hockey, and have been watching it more closely this year, but I’m still a helpless novice when it comes to the sport.

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