I must agree with you completely
having TIE/Normal/CT as options is a great tactical option.
In real life teams do take it easy some games, when they can afford to
maybe lose, but then again I'm in the II division and I can win 85% of the games taking it easy... and as a hypothetical fan of my team, I'd rather see them taking it easy, doing alley oops, having fun and still winning
and also concerning the "possibility to agree on playing TIE" , as you said, the agreement can be broken, and that's part of the behind the scenes agreements that are sometimes also made in real life... and sometimes not followed through