Heads, You’re Out: A Midnight Coin Flip at a Catfish Joint Decides Oklahoma’s Last Two Playoff Spots

(11-7-26) Three Oklahoma high school football teams finished the regular season tied for the final two playoff spots in their district. Every tiebreaker had been exhausted. So at midnight Friday, their three head coaches met in the parking lot of a catfish restaurant off Interstate 40, flipped coins — and one team’s season ended on a single toss.

Gore, Liberty and Central Sallisaw finished in a three-way tie for third place in District A-II-3, each 6-4 overall and 4-3 in district play. In Oklahoma, only the top four teams from each district advance to the playoffs (except in Class 6AI and 6AII), so two of the three would go on and one would go home.

The Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association had run through its whole tiebreaker ladder — district records, head-to-head results, point differentials — and none of it separated them. The head-to-head results were a perfect circle: Central beat Liberty, Gore beat Central, and Liberty beat Gore.

So the OSSAA went to its last resort. In an email sent before Friday night’s games, the association told the schools that if the three-way tie held, the coaches would meet OSSAA Associate Director Trinity Johnson at midnight at the Catfish Round Up, just off I-40 at Exit 200 outside Seminole, east of Oklahoma City. Each coach would flip a coin marked with his school’s color at the same time; the two coins that landed on the same side would advance, and the odd one out would be done. If all three had landed the same way, they would have kept flipping until one didn’t match.

The plan was public before a single game was played — Tulsa television anchor T.J. Eckert shared the OSSAA’s email on Nov. 5, and answered it:

“Hell yes. Let’s all meet at the Catfish Round Up.”

How the tie was set

Liberty went into Friday night alone in third place, but was blown out 63-8 by Talihina, the defending Class A-II state champion, which finished the regular season 10-0 and took the district’s top seed. Central Sallisaw closed with a 52-14 blowout of Porter. Gore won its finale 49-0 over Mounds. All three landed at 6-4, and the tiebreakers couldn’t split them.

The flip

Just after midnight, in the restaurant parking lot, with the OSSAA broadcasting live on Facebook, the three coaches — Gore’s Nathan McCurley, Liberty’s Nate Green and Central Sallisaw’s Jeremy Thompson — flipped at once.
Gore came up heads. Liberty and Central Sallisaw both came up tails. One toss was all it took.

“That’s a heads. Got a tails for Liberty, and a tails for Sallisaw. So Gore would be eliminated from the playoffs.”

Gore’s season is over at 6-4, despite winning its final game 49-0. Central Sallisaw and Liberty move on.

What happens next
The two survivors are seeded by head-to-head: Central Sallisaw takes the No. 3 seed thanks to its 48-28 win at Liberty on Oct. 9, and opens the Class A-II playoffs on the road at Woodland next week. Liberty, the No. 4 seed, travels to Ketchum.

According to Jeff Patterson of The Oklahoman, it was just the fourth time in three decades that a coin flip has been needed to settle an OSSAA football playoff tiebreaker.