By: HISTORY.com Editors

1974

NFL adopts overtime for regular-season games

HISTORY.com Editors

Published: August 27, 2021

Last Updated: May 27, 2025

On April 25, 1974, the NFL adopts a new overtime rule for regular-season games to prevent tie games. The rule change comes as part of sweeping effort to improve the action and tempo of games. The league also moves goal posts from the front to the back of the end zone and limits contact defensive players can make with receivers.

The new overtime rule mandated teams play an extra period if the score was tied at the end of regulation play. In overtime, the first team to score was declared the winner. If the score was still tied after the overtime, the game resulted in a tie. The NFL has since modified the overtime rule.

The season before the overtime rule was adopted, the NFL had seven ties in the regular season. Unlike some changes in NFL rules, the adoption of overtime was beneficial. From 1920 to 1973, the league had 256 ties. Since the 1974 rule change, ties have decreased significantly.

Most fans dislike ties; so do players. “It’s not losing … but it’s damn sure not winning,” NFL receiver Stefon Diggs once said.

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Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on April 25th

1719

“Robinson Crusoe” is published

Daniel Defoe’s fictional work The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is published. The book, about a shipwrecked sailor who spends 28 years on a deserted island, is based on the experiences of shipwreck victims and of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who spent four years on a small island off the coast of […]

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1859

Ground broken for Suez Canal

At Port Said, Egypt, ground is broken for the Suez Canal, an artificial waterway intended to stretch 101 miles across the isthmus of Suez and connect the Mediterranean and the Red seas. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French diplomat who organized the colossal undertaking, delivered the pickax blow that inaugurated construction. Canals have been built on […]

1915

Allies begin invasion of Gallipoli

On April 25, 1915, a week after Anglo-French naval attacks on the Dardanelles end in dismal failure, the Allies launch a large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula, the Turkish-controlled land mass bordering the northern side of the Dardanelles. In January 1915, two months after Turkey entered World War I on the side of the […]

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1917

Jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald is born

On April 25, 1917, jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald is born in Newport News, Virginia. She was called “The First Lady of Song,” an honor whose meaning is captured in a compliment paid to her by the great composer Ira Gershwin: “I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them.” […]

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1945

President Truman is briefed on Manhattan Project

On April 25, 1945, President Harry S. Truman learns the full details of the Manhattan Project, in which scientists are attempting to create the first atomic bomb. The information thrust upon Truman a momentous decision: whether or not to use the world’s first weapon of mass destruction. America’s secret development of the atomic bomb began […]

2:16m read

Glowing bright yellow dome-shaped cloud in a dark sky

1945

U.S. and Russian armies meet at Torgau, signaling imminent German defeat

On April 25, 1945, eight Russian armies completely encircle Berlin, linking up with the U.S. First Army patrol, first on the western bank of the Elbe, then later at Torgau. Germany is, for all intents and purposes, Allied territory. The Allies sounded the death knell of their common enemy by celebrating. In Moscow, news of […]

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1950

Chuck Cooper becomes first African American selected in NBA draft

On April 25, 1950, the Boston Celtics make Chuck Cooper, an All-American forward from Duquesne University, the first African American picked in NBA draft. With the selection, the first pick in the second round, Cooper breaks the NBA’s color barrier and changes the league for the better. The pick was met with skepticism by some […]

1:44m read

Boston Celtics' Chuck Cooper

1980

Plane crashes on Canary Islands, killing 146

A Dan-Air Boeing 727 carrying British tourists to the Canary Islands crashes and kills all 146 on board on April 25, 1980. This terrible crash came just three years after another even deadlier accident at the Canary Islands airport. In 1977, a KLM jumbo jet had collided with a Pan Am plane on the runway; […]

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1989

A father is exonerated after 21 years

James Richardson walks out of a Florida prison 21 years after being wrongfully convicted of killing his seven children. Special prosecutor Janet Reno agreed to the release after evidence showed that the conviction resulted from misconduct by the prosecutor. In addition, neighbor Betsy Reese had confessed to the crime to a nursing home employee. On […]

1:42m read

1990

Hubble Space Telescope placed in orbit

The crew of the U.S. space shuttle Discovery places the Hubble Space Telescope, a long-term space-based observatory, into a low orbit around Earth. The space telescope, conceived in the 1940s, designed in the 1970s, and built in the 1980s, was designed to give astronomers an unparalleled view of the solar system, the galaxy, and the […]

0:48m read

2014

The Flint water crisis begins

On April 25, 2014 officials from Flint, Michigan switched the city’s water supply to the Flint River as a cost-cutting measure for the struggling city. In doing so, they unwittingly introduced lead-poisoned water into homes, in what would become a massive public-health crisis. The problem started when officials decided to switch the water supply from […]

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2015

Magnitude 7.8 earthquake kills thousands in Nepal

On April 25, 2015 a magnitude 7.8 earthquake tears through Nepal, killing nearly 9,000 and injuring 16,800. It was the worst such earthquake for the Asian country since 1934. The earthquake struck shortly before noon, but the devastation continued as several dozen aftershocks caused even more destruction. Overall, Nepal was shaken by hundreds of aftershocks, […]

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Citation Information

Article title: NFL adopts overtime for regular-season games
Author: HISTORY.com Editors
Website Name: History
URL: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-25/nfl-overtime-rule-adopted

Date Accessed: July 02, 2025
Publisher: A&E Television Networks
Last Updated: May 27, 2025
Original Published Date: August 27, 2021

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