This is exceedingly lame: If this morning’s Group C World Cup games finish a certain way, the United States will advance to the next round only if its name is on a ball drawn from a bowl.
UPDATE: From a reader:
The final tie breaker for the NFL to get into the playoffs is a coin toss.
In the NFL’s defense, it resorts to a coin toss only after a long season and a series of tie-breaking possibilities. In World Cup soccer, the drawing-lots option arrives after three games that frequently end in tie scores. Perhaps the World Cup should have a shootout after regulation, with the results counting only for tie-breaking purposes–anything to avoid the need to draw a ball from a bowl.