The Monday After: What to make of college football overtime rules after Penn


Since the start of the 2017 college football season, the 130 teams at the FBS level of the sport have decided to go for two points following a touchdown 1,312 times, and 1,000 of those attempts came during overtime of Illinois‘ 20-18 upset win over Penn State on Saturday. All right, it wasn’t 1,000 of them. It was only 14 but felt like 1,000. It was also something we are unlikely to see again.

You see, of those 1,312 two-point attempts since 2017, 499 of them have been successful (three of those 499 coming between Illinois and Penn State … in 14 attempts), or 38%. That means 62% of two-point conversions over the last five seasons have been failures, but even if that seems like a lot, what happened on Saturday remains a statistical improbability.

After trading field goals in the first two overtimes, the Illini and Nittany Lions traded 10 consecutive failed conversion attempts. Using the math shared above about the success rate of conversions, the likelihood of two teams failing on 10 straight two-point conversions was 0.84%, which isn’t nearly as unlikely as two teams converting 10 straight. No, that’s down at 0.006%.

That’s what makes so many of the reactions to the nine-overtime fail fest so amusing. As is the case with nearly everything in college football, some people hate it and demand change while some love it; however, nobody thinks any of these feelings through before loudly proclaiming them. 

As I sat and watched it, I felt nothing different than what I felt in April when the new format was announced. I understand the intent behind the decision to change the format. Safety is at the heart of it all, and the NCAA wants to limit the number of plays in a game to reduce injuries. Ironically, Illinois lost quarterback Art Sitkowski to a wrist injury during overtime, and it was Brandon Peters who threw the game-winning pass to Casey Washington.

But the NCAA can do that while also providing a more logical — and still entertaining — end to a game that’s tied after 60 minutes. Here’s a simple fix that I wrote about back in April:

My biggest question about the new format is why wait until the second overtime to force teams to go for two? If we’re comfortable having games end in two-point conversion shootouts, why can’t we force teams to go for two in the first overtime? Doing that alone would significantly reduce the chances of getting to the shootout portion of overtime to begin with while shortening the games overall. That’s better for broadcast partners trying to squeeze games into tighter windows, and it’s fewer plays for the players.

Odds are this format won’t impact many games overall, and I probably won’t mind seeing some Friday night game between Mountain West teams ending slightly sooner because of it. The rule might be stupid, but stupidity has been a part of college football just as long as marching bands and sneaking flasks into the student section have been. It’s more of a feature than a bug.

The other tweak I mentioned back in April — and the one I want to see made more than anything — is for the NCAA to abandon this format in the College…



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