Overtime Rule to Be Reviewed

NFL rule makers will decide in the spring whether to change the sudden-death overtime format, two members of the league’s competition committee said Wednesday.

The panel, which makes recommendations on rules to owners, plans to review the league’s method of breaking ties, Tampa Bay General Manager Rich McKay and Baltimore General Manager Ozzie Newsome said. They are on the eight-member committee.

The league has used sudden death, where the first team to score in a 15-minute overtime period wins, during the regular season since 1974. Critics claim that the team that wins the coin- toss at the beginning of the extra period and gets the ball first usually wins the game.

“If you win the coin toss, you have an upper hand,” Buffalo President Tom Donahoe said “The game shouldn’t be decided by a coin toss.”

The move to review the rule comes during a season that has had 20 overtime games -- one short of the record set in 1995 -- with four weeks remaining.

Since the 2000 season, coin-toss winners have won 60% of the time.

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A day after a different Warner made news, the St. Louis Rams’ quarterback was eager for the controversy to end.

Brenda Warner had called a radio station Tuesday to complain that her husband had his broken hand X-rayed at her urging, not at the insistence of Coach Mike Martz. The tape of her brief complaint, in response to a suggestion that perhaps Kurt Warner had violated a trust with Martz by holding out on the injury, has been replayed endlessly in St. Louis.

“Martz had nothing to do with it,” Brenda Warner said. “All week long I said, ‘Kurt, I’m a nurse, you should go get it X-rayed.’ The doctors never once said he should get an X-ray. [They] said, ‘No, it’s only bruised.’ ”

Said Kurt Warner: “None of it’s really an issue, so I’m not worried about it and nothing I need to comment on.” He will sit out at least two weeks because of a hairline fracture at the knuckle of the little finger.

Warner refused comment on whether Martz had insisted on X-rays Monday, asking at that point only to field questions about the hand. Martz also had little to say on the subject.

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Denver Bronco guard Steve Herndon and Coach Mike Shanahan apologized to San Diego Charger defensive tackle Jamal Williams, whose season was ended by a questionable hit by Herndon on Sunday.

Williams dislocated his left ankle and underwent surgery Monday. He was put on the injured reserve list Wednesday.

Shanahan also called Charger Coach Marty Schottenheimer, who described Herndon’s block as “disturbing.”

The play occurred in the third quarter of San Diego’s 30-27 overtime win, when Williams was hit from behind by Herndon as Williams chased tailback Clinton Portis on a screen pass.

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Receiver Herman Moore announced his retirement, knowing he had little chance of playing for the New York Giants and that the injury-riddled team needed his roster space.

It comes less than a month after the Giants signed the Detroit Lions’ leading career receiver. Moore, 33, said the retirement is more a technicality, because he wants to play next season.

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The Arizona Supreme Court has cleared the way for construction work to begin in earnest on the Arizona Cardinals’ stadium.

Brad Parker, a spokesman for the Tourism and Sports Authority, said a decision announced Wednesday also gives the go-ahead to Cactus League baseball projects in Phoenix and Surprise, and construction of a youth sports facility.

The Supreme Court without comment denied a petition for review of an Aug. 27 decision in which a Court of Appeals panel ruled that the law that created the TSA was constitutional. The decision upheld a lower court’s ruling from November 2001.

Phoenix developer John F. Long sued after land he offered as a site for the stadium was rejected by the TSA board in favor of a location in Tempe. The Tempe site was pulled when the Federal Aviation Administration declared it a potential hazard for planes at Phoenix’s nearby Sky Harbor International Airport.

TSA agreed to put the $355-million stadium in Glendale, next to an arena the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes are building.