How does overtime work in college football? Learning more about NCAA rule book

The college football game against Deion Sanders' Colorado and Jay Norvell's Colorado State had fans worldwide up at odd hours to watch a thrilling battle. No doubt it was an absolute nail-biter, watching the game hitting OT.

But how exactly does this work and is it different from the NFL? Here we take a look.

How does overtime work in college football?

In college football, the visiting team calls the coin toss to decide which team possesses the ball first in O.T. with play starting at the opponent's 25-yard line.

While both teams are allowed to possess the ball, only one drive per O.T. period is allowed. It also has three distinct periods which all differ from each other.

The first period is akin to a normal football game with teams allowed to go for two if a touchdown is scored or to kick a field goal. During the second period, teams are restricted to going for two if a touchdown is scored.

During the third O.T. period and any others afterward in college football, teams are restricted to one-play drives and two-point attempts which reduces the number of plays during the remainder of the game.

The team on offense is allowed to start its possession at any point between the hash marks.

Teams get to keep possession until a turnover occurs or they fail to score, at which point the other team gets possession.

Each team has one timeout during each of the O.T. periods and the timeouts don't carry over from regulation time or between the periods either.

These O.T. rules are consistent during the regular and postseason.

There have been quite a few games that have stretched out into multiple O.T.'s and after the ill-tempered double overtime Rocky Mountain Pac-12 after dark showdown, fans were curious as to which games went into the most overtimes.

That honor belongs to Illinois when they beat Penn State 20-18 in a 9-O.T. thriller on October 23, 2021. It took a two-point conversion for the game to come to a close.

How does college football overtime differ from the NFL?

The first O.T. rules in football were introduced in 1996 and since then, they have undergone quite a few changes, and the NCAA college version differs from the NFL version.

The NFL O.T. is a 10-minute period where both teams possess the ball and each team is given the chance to match any score made by the team in possession of the ball.

In case of a tie, the game moves to sudden death where the first team to score wins.