Imagine an overtime game in the NBA ending after the first shot. Imagine the home team not getting a final at-bat in the 10th inning of Game 7 of the World Series. Imagine a World Cup soccer shootout in which the first shot that goes in means the other team is headed home.

If you can do that, you can imagine the way the NFL ends its overtime games. They shouldn’t call it sudden death. They should call it sudden victory because the moment one team scores, they suddenly win, whether the other side ever touches the ball or not.

Why it is this way is the same reason a lot of things are the way they are. That’s the way they’ve always done it. That doesn’t mean it’s right, or that it makes the most sense. It’s just “tradition.” Frankly, so was not rotating your crops until the Dust Bowl hit Oklahoma.

The most egregious recent example of how absurd things can get under the present overtime system came a year ago when the Buffalo Bills opened their season at home with a come-from-behind performance that had the house rocking at the Ralph, as they call Ralph Wilson Stadium. The Bills and new quarterback Drew Bledsoe had roared back to tie a game with the New York Jets in the final seconds of the fourth quarter on a long pass, and the noise was deafening.

Then came the overtime kickoff and there went Chad Morton and the Jets had won. You could have heard a pin drop in the stadium after that return. Overtime was over, but when did it start? Not only did the Bills not get to play offense, the Jets didn’t even get to play offense. Nor did they have to.

Whenever a team loses in overtime without ever touching the ball, this subject comes up and rightfully so because, unlike a lot of problems in sports and in life, this one is easy to solve. Both teams get to touch the ball. Simple as that.

If the team that gets the opening kickoff scores first, the opposing team should get one chance to match or exceed it. If the team that gets the opening kickoff throws an interception or fumbles and the ball is returned for a score or the recovering team’s offense scores, the game is over because both teams would have had the opportunity to handle the ball at least once.

If a team fumbles away the overtime kickoff and the other team scores with it or recovers it and their offense scores, the team whose offense never got on the field gets one chance to handle the ball. This might lead you to argue that the team that returned the muffed kickoff for a score never got its offense on the field so shouldn’t it have another chance to answer back, if necessary?

The answer to that can simply be no. Each team handled the ball once (when the special teams recovered the fumble in this case and turned it into a touchdown). If the opposing offense comes back and beats them with a touchdown and two-point conversion, both teams at least had a chance to get on the scoreboard, even if only one of the offenses actually got off the bench.

However, if your sense of justice is offended by that, the NFL could even say that no matter what happens on the opening kickoff, both teams’ offenses get to handle the ball at least once. Ah, Al Davis would point out, what if the team that fumbled the opening kickoff and gave up a score did it a second time and hence still hadn’t managed to get its offense on the field?

Sorry, game over. As in life, you may get a second chance but third chances are rare and, in the NFL, not available. Everybody needs a second chance to recover from life’s fumbles, but it is the rare bird (or the rich kid with a trust fund) who gets a third chance. Not many NFL teams should get one, either.

More than likely, somebody on the Competition Committee or someone buried deep in the internal organization of one of the league’s teams may still come up with some kind of scenario that might call the fairness of this new overtime rule into question. Even if they did, nothing could be more unfair than the way things are now.

When you play only 16 games, every Sunday is a significant moment in a team’s season. To decide an overtime game with only one team touching the ball seems so absurd that it is a wonder it is still an issue in the NFL. This is not only ludicrous, but it cuts out a potentially enthralling set of circumstances that could get the fans involved in endless second guessing.

Do you go for a field goal on your first possession, knowing you could lose if your opponent comes back and scores a touchdown? Do you go for two points to win by one against a superior team that has been dominating you on defense or pounding you with its offense if you score a touchdown first in overtime?

What about the excitement caused by a team having to score a touchdown to tie in OT? Or having to make a decision on fourth down whether to go for the tying field goal or go for the winning score?

The potential for drama is almost without limit, and the potential for debate certainly is. The latter may well be part of the reason many coaches feel they’d rather live with things the way they are because other than the coin flip, there’s not much a coach has to decide under the present system. If you think your guy can make the field goal, you kick it and go home, knowing your opponent will never get to touch the football again.

If you were faced with that situation knowing your opponent would get a chance to come back at you and win with a touchdown, it would make for some high drama in the coaches’ booth, to say the least.

So why not streamline things and be more fair about a game’s outcome, especially when each one is so important in a 16-game season?

Each team either gets its offense on the field at least once or gets the opportunity to score once. That covers a special teams touchdown or a defensive score that comes without a team’s offense getting on the field, because since that team scored it doesn’t have to be given another chance if its opponent wins on a two-point conversion. Fact of the matter is, not many NFL head coaches would make that choice anyway, because they are by nature more conservative than John Ashcroft. No coach is likely to try a two-point conversion in OT to win when he can tie and keep things alive by just kicking the extra point. But it would be an interesting discussion when he knows if his opponent comes back and scores again, the game is over.

If complete simplification is what you need, then just say each offense gets to be on the field at least one time. End of story. Anything is better than the “you don’t even get to play” rule that presently exists.

Eventually the NFL will modify its overtime rule but not without a fight and probably not without a key playoff game or, worse, the Super Bowl itself being decided without one of the teams ever getting to play offense in the fifth quarter. That’s too bad, but it’s too often how most things change in society these days. Only after an accident — or worse, a train wreck. Maybe the NFL will be smarter than that.

Then again, probably not.

Ron Borges writes regularly for NBCSports.com and covers the NFL and boxing for the Boston Globe.

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