A tied score exposes how much we wanted the event to produce a clear story.

A draw is unsatisfying because it refuses to produce a story. We come to these events wanting a resolution, a winner, a reason, and a tie hands back a fact without a narrative. The frustration is not really about the sport; it is about the human appetite for events that mean something.

That appetite runs everywhere and it distorts a lot. Situations without clear resolutions, illnesses without diagnoses, conflicts where nobody was wrong, get forced into stories they do not fit. Practising tolerance for the unresolved in small places, like a drawn game, makes it slightly easier in the larger ones where the temptation to invent a story is stronger.