STRANGE START TO OVERTIME AT NOTRE DAME

At the outset of overtime in today’s Pittsburgh-Notre Dame game, Notre Dame won the coin toss, and in the process we learned that the Fighting Irish captain doesn’t understand how college football overtime works.The team that wins the toss in college football overtime always chooses to go on defense first because of the advantage of knowing what your offense needs to do to win. But Notre Dame’s captain apparently doesn’t know that.After Notre Dame won the toss, the ref turned to the Notre Dame captain and said, “You want to go on defense, correct?"The captain replied, “We want to defer."The ref looked confused for a moment before saying, “You can’t defer."Eventually, it was explained to the Fighting Irish that they wanted to go on defense, and that’s what they chose to do.And then things got even stranger. After the first play of overtime, the game had to be delayed because the sprinklers started watering the Notre Dame Stadium field. It took a couple of minutes -- apparently there’s more to turning off the sprinklers than just turning a knob -- but eventually the water got shut off and overtime finally resumed.Note: When the second overtime period was played in the area where the sprinklers had been watering the field, the NBC announcers made a big deal out of how unsafe it was that they were playing on wet grass. Uh, guys? Are you aware that football games aren’t canceled when it rains?UPDATE: Pittsburgh won 36-33 in four overtimes, with the overtimes resembling World Cup penalty kicks: Neither team could get into the end zone, so they just traded field goals until the fourth overtime, when Notre Dame’s kicker missed and Pittsburgh’s kicker made it.