You can pretty much dissect the statistics in any manner. On the one hand, of the first 13 overtime games in the NFL this season, 10 were won by the team that prevailed in the always-thrilling pre-OT coin flip -- six of those on the first possession.

On the other hand, over the course of NFL sudden-death overtime history, only about 50 percent of the coin-flip winners went on to take victory in the game.

And this, quite naturally, leads us to either the third hand or, depending upon your view, the club foot: In virtually 100 percent of sudden-death games, a better option has been available.

The networks might never stand for it, but the NFL really has a choice other than to weekly take the risk that one of its games, which ticket-buyers pay such a pretty penny to see and TV advertisers such royal amounts of cash to sponsor, could end in OT without one of the two teams in question so much as touching the ball.

It happened in the Raiders-49ers game in Oakland two weeks ago, and it's a lame shame. And there is a dual-possession model, already in use in college football, that despite its occasional clunks is superior to what you see in today's NFL.

What you currently see, in both theory and occasional grim practice: Flip of the coin, one side wins, field-goal kicker starts warming up. Thanks and drive home safely, everybody!

It's astounding that a league so deeply involved in the Hoovering of Americans' discretionary income could for so long cater to a system with such a "game experience" flaw. There isn't another major pro sport in the country that doesn't have a more satisfying method of attempting to break a tie at the end of regulation play -- and every one of those methods gives both sides a chance to do the breaking.

The NFL's approach is fairly straightforward: If you can't take care of business in 60 minutes of game time, we'll do it for you. First points in overtime win. It's a quick-finish system designed to get the game off the air before either the late-game telecast or the prime-time telecast block begins, and that's show biz.

But the problem, and this exists on both sports and entertainment levels, is that after four quarters of both teams' offenses and defenses being asked both to make plays and stop them, the OT suddenly switches to a system in which such strategy may no longer apply. It's unsettling and unsatisfying even in games in which both sides eventually have possession. The mere hint of an unfair device can be enough to turn off some fans, and that's a notion that ought to be reckoned with by any league attempting to woo them.

In the case of that game in Oakland, the 49ers won the toss, marched down against a Raiders defense that was on the field for the final 30 plays of the game, and booted the same chip-shot field goal that their kicker hadn't been able to convert at the end of regulation. That's no swipe on the 49ers; they generally played better throughout, and won the game fair and square under the current rules.

But consider: If that's basketball, the NBA tacks an extra five minutes on the clock, and both sides commence immediately to playing offense and defense until somebody is ahead when the horn sounds. No baseball team can win in extra innings without both scoring and retiring the other side. Hockey plays to sudden death, but each team has its chance to control the puck from the instant that it is dropped to begin the OT.

Heck, even soccer's maligned shootout format has it over the NFL system. It's a contrivance, sure, but it still involves offense and defense as played by members of both teams.

We like the NCAA's approach, but the NFL doesn't have to do anything overtly drastic here; a mild copy of that college system might be usefully considered. Give each team four downs from, say, the opponent's 40- or 45-yard line, rather than the closer range the NCAA prefers. Make each team work both on offense and defense, the same as it did for the 60 minutes preceding overtime.

Might teams occasionally extend their ties deep into the overtime? Sure; it happens in hockey all the time. Might those extensions occasionally screw up the network programming rubric on Sundays? They might, they might.

But the view from here is that the NFL has a problem that is fixable -- not a huge problem, not a tiny speck of a problem, but most certainly a fixable one. Considering how much goes on in pro sports that their governing leagues appear powerless to control, this one's sitting up on a tee. Somebody, take a whack.

Mark Kreidler is a columnist with the Sacramento Bee and a regular contributor to ESPN.com