The NFL should have no serious interest in trying to emulate college football, where the games are interminable and a legitimate postseason remains a fantasy, but that hasn't stopped the league from bringing you, for the first time on the professional stage, the one and only, never exciting, deferred choice by the team winning the coin toss. Thanks so much, really.

For the first 75 years of pro football, teams winning the coin toss could elect to either receive the ball, which they did 99.99999 percent of the time, or to kick the ball which they did in the occasional hurricane. But that was too straightforward evidently, so the third collegiate option is now available, to defer the decision until the start of the second half.

It's so lame. I thought the NFL understood better than any sports entity that it is primarily in the entertainment business. From a theatrical standpoint, the deferral is a loser. It's a killer for the dramatic arc, is it not?

Pro football games are hotly anticipated, hyped to the max, staged in a packed stadium moved to full focus as the captains converge at the center of the field. And now the coin is tossed in full ceremony. The home team wins the toss, and the place explodes. The home team's captain barks in his menacing baritone ... "Uh, it's up to you guys. I mean, whatever."

All right, maybe not exactly. It's likely worse.

"We defer."

What kind of a football word is defer? Why not at least demur?

"Captain Stonebreaker, you've won the toss, what do you want to do?"

"We submit in the sense that we accede though not necessarily succumb. More accurately we postpone, or in Parliamentary procedure, we prorogue."

"So you defer."

"I'm not sayin' it."

I asked Mike Tomlin about this after practice yesterday, and, thankfully, he delivered a swift and refreshing swipe of logic.

"This is the National Football League," said the Steelers' coach. "You take the football, all things being considered."

Of course, that was after he said all the things that are to be considered: "There are a number of things that determine whether or not you accept the ball. One being game location. If you're in a hostile environment and you have faith in your defense, you might want to start on defense. In some bad weather, that might be a consideration relative to field position. It depends mostly on how you feel about your defense, and we feel good about ours."

If I'm translating that last part, I'm guessing he'll instruct captain James Farrior to defer should the Steelers win the toss Sunday, regardless of whether anyone understands it.

"I don't understand the whole defer thing," said co-captain Hines Ward. "They deferred at Minnesota a couple weeks ago. My feeling is, why defer and just worry about it when you start the second half when you're overlooking the first half? I'm worried about the first half. Besides, as an offensive player, I want to get out there, get that first hit out of the way, and get this thing goin'."

In February at the Super Bowl, someone asked New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin, if, since most teams who receive the opening kickoff wind up losing the Super Bowl, he would consider kicking off if the Giants won the toss. Honest to God.

"So we're going to give the [unbeaten] Patriots the ball one more time, that's what we're setting out to do?" he asked incredulously. "They don't do well enough with their drives so they need another one?"

After he somehow kept from rolling his eyes, Coughlin spat out the following:

"This isn't college football."

Dick LeBeau, in the pro game for only 50 years this autumn, didn't have to think about it.

"Never defer," said the defensive coordinator who presumably has a lot of faith in the defense. "Gimme the ball!"

And then even he equivocated.

"Maybe if the weather's bad."

College coaches almost always defer, it seems, presumably because they are somehow soothed by the knowledge that no matter how badly things go in the first half, they're getting the ball to start the second. Well, that's dandy, except that you spend the first five days of the week emphasizing that turnovers are potentially lethal and screaming at kids to protect the football, and now with the first decision of Saturday afternoon, you're faced with the essentially the following question: you've won the toss, you want the ball?

No, they can have it. What?

The entire issue emerges, Steelers director of football operations Kevin Colbert points out, from this not altogether necessary little ceremony. The captains, co-captains, honorary captains, honorary co-captains, a military honor guard, four Minicam holders, and Miss Pumpkin Patch and her Court and the referee for some reason, need to gather for a ritualistic flip that essentially leaves to chance the first possession. There's an easier, and, Colbert indicates, a more equitable way.

In the NFL, everyone plays eight games at home and eight on the road. Let the home team have the first choice at the start of the game, in the event of overtime, and in the playoffs, the reward for securing home-field advantage. The only exception would be the Super Bowl, where the coin toss must retain all the dramatic momentum that will one day make it a full Stephen Spielberg production.

In the meantime, take the ball.