College Football Overtime Rules: The 25-Yard Line Format
How college football overtime rules work under the NCAA: possessions from the 25-yard line, mandatory two-point tries, the shootout from the 3 and no ties.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Updated College Football21 min read
- Possessions start at
- Opponent's 25-yard line
- Two-point plays start at
- 3-yard line
- Adopted for all FBS games
- 1996
- Most overtimes in one game
- 9
Illinois 20, Penn State 18 looks like a baseball score that wandered into October. It took nine overtime periods at Beaver Stadium on October 23, 2021, and in the last seven of them neither offense was allowed to start a drive. The teams took turns running one play from the 3-yard line until Illinois completed a pass and Penn State had not. That is where the college football overtime rules end up when two teams refuse to separate.
They start somewhere simpler. Under the NCAA Football Rules Book, a game tied after four quarters goes to extra periods with no game clock. In the first overtime each team gets one possession beginning first-and-10 at the opponent's 25-yard line. If the score is still level, a second period is played the same way, except that any touchdown must be followed by a two-point try. From the third overtime on, the drives are gone and the teams alternate single two-point plays from the 3 until one converts and the other does not. There are no ties.
The format in one pass: a possession each from the 25-yard line
Everything in the college procedure follows from one idea. Both teams get the ball, from the same spot, at the same end of the field, and whoever has more points after both have had it wins.
A possession series begins first-and-10 at the 25. The offense keeps the ball as long as it keeps making first downs, so a 10-yard gain produces first-and-10 at the 15, and another gives first-and-goal. It can score a touchdown, kick a field goal on any down, turn the ball over, or fail on fourth down. When the series ends, the other team takes over at the same 25-yard line, going the same direction.
Then the officials compare the score. Ahead after two possessions wins. Level means another period.
- End of regulationThe score is level after four quarters. A coin toss decides who chooses first.
- First overtimeEach team gets a possession from the opponent's 25-yard line. After a touchdown it may kick or go for two.
- Second overtimePossessions from the 25 again. A touchdown must be followed by a two-point try.
- Third overtimeNo drives. Each team runs one two-point play from the 3-yard line.
- Every period afterThe same exchange of two-point plays, repeated until one team converts and the other fails.
The extra-period procedure in the NCAA rules book as it has stood since the 2021 season.
What is missing is as instructive as what is there. No kickoff. No punting, in any sensible game plan. No field position to win, since the offense starts in field goal range and stays there. A team that gains nothing on three downs is still looking at a kick of about 42 yards, which is why the first overtime so often ends in an exchange of field goals or touchdowns and settles nothing.
| Period | Where each team starts | After a touchdown |
|---|---|---|
| First overtime | Opponent's 25-yard line, first-and-10 | Kick the extra point or try for two |
| Second overtime | Opponent's 25-yard line, first-and-10 | Must try for two |
| Third overtime | 3-yard line, one play | Not applicable; the play is the try |
| Fourth and later | 3-yard line, one play | Not applicable |
The same procedure governs every NCAA division. A playoff game in the Football Championship Subdivision and a Division III conference game are settled exactly as a Big Ten game is; our guide to the two halves of Division I covers where those levels do differ.
The coin toss, and why nearly everyone takes defense first
Before the first extra period the referee brings the captains to midfield for a new toss, and the visiting captain calls it. The winner has two kinds of choice: play offense or defense first, or pick which end of the field will be used for both possessions of that period. The loser gets whichever choice is left. Nobody can defer.
Almost every winner says "defense." The reason is information. The team that goes second knows precisely what it needs. If the first possession ended in a field goal, the second offense can play for a touchdown and treat the tying kick as a floor. If it ended in a touchdown, the second team knows that fourth down is not a decision. If it ended in a turnover, a conservative three runs and a chip-shot field goal wins the game. The first team has to guess at all of this.
That leaves the loser of the toss with the end of the field. It is a smaller prize but not an empty one. A captain can point his offense toward its own student section and away from the other one, or choose the end with the wind at the kicker's back. When the wind is up, that is a real choice.
How the choice alternates
The toss is not repeated. In the second overtime the team that lost it gets the first choice, and the privilege keeps switching: the toss winner chooses first in odd-numbered periods, the loser in even-numbered ones. In practice the team with the first choice keeps taking defense, so the order of possession flips each period. The side that had to go first in the opening overtime gets to go second in the next.
This is why a long game feels balanced in a way the first period does not. Any edge from batting last, to borrow the other sport's phrase, is handed back and forth.
The mechanics of the pregame toss in the professional game, where deferring is the standard choice, are in our guide to NFL coin toss rules.
The second overtime: the 25-yard line again, with a mandatory two-point try
On the field the second period looks identical to the first. Same starting spot, same downs, same field goal available on any snap. One sentence in the rulebook changes the arithmetic: beginning with the second extra period, a team that scores a touchdown must attempt a two-point try. The kicked extra point is no longer available.
The effect is to break the most common stalemate. In a first overtime, touchdown-and-kick answered by touchdown-and-kick sends everyone around again with seven points apiece. In the second, a two-point try from the 3-yard line succeeds somewhat less than half the time across college football, so matching touchdowns frequently produce different totals. Eight plays six. Game over.
It also makes the field goal a stranger proposition. A team that kicks first in the second overtime can be beaten by a touchdown alone, with the try irrelevant. A team that scores a touchdown and fails on the try has six, and can still lose to six-plus-two or tie against another six.
Georgia and Georgia Tech showed the full range in 2024. Level at 27 after regulation, they traded touchdowns and extra points in the first overtime to reach 34-34. In the second, both scored touchdowns and both failed on the mandatory try. Forty apiece, and on to the shootout.
Where the mandatory try used to begin
For most of the format's life the requirement arrived one period later. Through the 2020 season a team could keep kicking extra points through two overtimes and had to go for two only from the third. The NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel moved it up to the second period in 2021, as part of the same package that brought the shootout forward. The stated aim both times was to end games in fewer plays.
For the try itself, the college and professional rules differ on where the ball is snapped and on what the defense can do with a turnover, which our explainer on two-point conversion rules sets out from the NFL side.
Third overtime onward: alternating two-point plays from the 3-yard line
Here the format stops resembling football as usually played. From the third extra period, there are no possession series. Each team gets one scrimmage play from the 3-yard line, run under the rules for a try. A conversion is worth two points. Then the other team gets its play. If one side converted and the other did not, the game ends. If both did or neither did, that was one overtime period, and the next begins.
No first downs, no field goals, no clock. Three yards of grass and one snap.
The Illinois and Penn State game is the format's monument. Tied at 10 after regulation, the teams exchanged field goals in each of the first two overtimes to reach 16-16. Then came the two-point plays, and five straight periods in which neither offense scored. Ten consecutive failures from the 3-yard line. Both converted in the eighth overtime, making it 18-18. In the ninth, Penn State's attempt failed and Illinois quarterback Brandon Peters found Casey Washington in the end zone.
Georgia against Georgia Tech three years later ran the same course at a higher score. Both failed in the third and fourth overtimes, both converted in the fifth to make it 42-42, and both failed again in the sixth and seventh. In the eighth, Georgia Tech's pass fell incomplete and Nate Frazier ran in the winner for Georgia.
A detail the shootout inherits from the ordinary college try: the defense can score on it. An interception or fumble returned the length of the field on a try is worth two points to the defense in the college game, and that remains true when the try is the whole overtime period.
Why the committee wanted it this way
Player safety, stated plainly. Each period of the older format meant two more full drives for defenders who had already played a complete game, and a seven-overtime game meant fourteen of them. A two-point shootout caps each period at two plays. The price is that the deciding snaps of a marathon look more like a skills contest than a football game, and plenty of coaches say so. The rules committee decided the trade was worth making.
Timeouts and the play clock in extra periods
Nothing carries over. Timeouts a team saved in the fourth quarter vanish when regulation ends, and a timeout unused in one overtime period does not roll into the next.
| Period | Timeouts per team |
|---|---|
| First overtime | One |
| Second overtime | One |
| Third overtime to the end of the game, from 2025 | One in total |
| Third overtime onward, through 2024 | One in each period |
| Carried over from regulation | None |
The third row is the newest part of the procedure. Through the 2024 season each team received a fresh timeout in every extra period, however many there were. In a shootout that meant a stoppage could precede nearly every two-point play, and coaches used them that way, to ice an offense or to see a formation and then change the defensive call. For 2025 the NCAA cut it back: once a game reaches the third overtime, each team has a single timeout to last until the game ends.
Georgia and Georgia Tech played their eight overtimes under the old allotment. A game like it today would be played with far fewer pauses after the second period.
The play clock still runs
The absence of a game clock does not mean the absence of a clock. The play clock operates as it does in regulation: 40 seconds from the end of the previous play, 25 after an administrative stoppage. Delay of game is still five yards, and five yards on a two-point play from the 3 turns it into a try from the 8.
Between periods there is a short intermission, and the teams get a brief extra rest after the second and fourth overtimes. An overtime game therefore adds real time in lumps, a subject taken up in our guide to how long a college football game lasts. How the professional game rations stoppages is covered in the page on NFL timeout rules.
How the defense can end it on a single play
A turnover in overtime does more than end a possession. The ball stays live.
If the defense intercepts a pass or recovers a fumble and returns it for a touchdown, the game is over on the spot. It makes no difference which possession of the period it was. Suppose the team on offense first throws an interception that goes back 80 yards: the defense now leads by six and its own possession is unnecessary, so none is played and no try is attempted. Suppose instead it happens on the second possession: the returning team had already had its turn, and the touchdown puts it ahead for good.
When the defender is tackled short of the goal line, the possession simply ends at that point. The return yardage buys nothing. The team that forced the turnover starts its own series back at the 25 like anyone else.
That creates one of overtime's clearest situations. A team whose defense has just taken the ball away without giving up points needs any score to win. It is first-and-10 at the 25, already in range. The standard response is two or three runs toward the middle of the field to set the hash mark, then the kick. Coaches who throw the ball in that spot are answering to somebody on Monday.
The reverse holds too. A defender who intercepts on the second possession when his team is already ahead should get down. The game is won the moment the possession ends, and a fumble on the return is the only way to lose what he has just secured.
The strategy the format creates
Going second is an advantage, though a modest one. Studies of overtime results over the years have generally found the team with the second possession winning a little more than half the time, not the overwhelming share its reputation suggests. The edge is real because of information, and limited because the choice alternates and because the first team's defense still has to be beaten.
When to play for a field goal
The first team's dilemma is fourth down. Fourth-and-2 at the 17 in the first overtime offers a kick of about 34 yards or a chance to extend the drive. Most coaches kick, reasoning that three points forces the opponent to do something and zero points lets it win with a short field goal. The numbers on short-yardage conversions argue for more aggression than that, the same case made in our piece on fourth-down analytics, and the 2021 rule changes strengthened it: a field goal is worth less when the other side can end the game with a touchdown and when the shootout looms for teams with poor goal-line offenses.
The 2018 College Football Playoff championship game is the cautionary tale. Georgia had the ball first, stalled, and took a 51-yard field goal from Rodrigo Blankenship for a 23-20 lead. Alabama's first play was a 16-yard sack. On second-and-26 from the 41, Tua Tagovailoa threw a touchdown pass to DeVonta Smith and the season was over. Georgia had done nothing wrong by the conventional book. It had simply left the door open by three points.
When to go for two and end it
In the first overtime the second team has an option the format hands to nobody else: score a touchdown to pull within one, then go for two and the win rather than kick to extend. Boise State did it against Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl on January 1, 2007. Oklahoma scored on the first play of overtime and kicked the point. Boise State answered with a touchdown on a fourth-down halfback pass, then ran the Statue of Liberty for two points and a 43-42 win.
The logic is sounder than the trick play made it look. A two-point try is close to an even proposition, and so is another period of overtime. A coach who thinks his team is the weaker one, or the more tired one, or who has one play he trusts completely, is right to take the single snap. Since 2021 the decision has been made for everyone from the second period on.
Play-calling inside the 25 belongs to a compressed field, with no deep safety help needed and little room for vertical routes. That is ordinary goal-to-go football, which our guide to the red zone explains in detail.
What overtime does to the box score
An overtime game is one game. Every point scored in the extra periods goes into the final score, and the individual statistics from overtime drives, the rushing yards and completions and touchdowns, are added to the game totals and from there to season and career totals.
That is how the scoreboard reaches numbers that regulation football rarely produces. Texas A&M and LSU were tied 31-31 after four quarters in 2018 and finished 74-72. Arkansas and Kentucky went from 24-24 to 71-63 in 2003.
The chart is the rule change in a single picture. Seven overtimes under the old format produced 80 points or more. Nine overtimes under the new one produced 18.
Two quirks follow. Because every drive starts at the 25, overtime inflates touchdowns faster than it inflates yards: a quarterback can throw three touchdown passes in overtime and add 75 yards to his total. And once the shootout begins the statistics nearly stop, since yardage gained on a try is not credited as rushing or passing yards under the NCAA's statistics policies. Points go up by twos and the yardage column does not move.
A win is a win in the standings. College football has no equivalent of hockey's point for an overtime loss, and nothing in the College Football Playoff selection process formally discounts a victory that needed extra periods.
College football overtime vs NFL overtime
The two systems share a name and little else. One is a timed continuation of the game. The other is a separate contest staged on a quarter of the field.
| Feature | College (NCAA) | NFL |
|---|---|---|
| How it starts | Possession at the opponent's 25-yard line | Coin toss and a kickoff |
| Game clock | None | A timed period: 10 minutes in the regular season, 15 in the playoffs |
| Possessions | Each team gets one per period | Each team is guaranteed a possession, then the next score wins |
| Special teams | Field goals and tries only | Kickoffs, punts and returns all in play |
| Ties | Impossible | Possible in the regular season when the period expires level |
| Later stages | Two-point plays from the 3 beginning in the third period | Further 15-minute periods in the playoffs until someone leads |
The NFL's version preserves the whole sport, including field position and the punt. It also preserves the tie, and for decades it gave the toss winner a chance to win without the other offense touching the ball. The league has amended that repeatedly, most recently guaranteeing both teams a possession; the full account is in our explainer on NFL overtime and why the toss still matters.
The college version is fairer in the narrow sense that both offenses always play. Its critics point out that it deletes a third of the game, punishes teams built on defense and special teams, and has since 2021 been willing to decide a four-hour contest with something close to a penalty shootout. Both complaints are accurate. So is the defense: nobody leaves a college stadium with a tie. A fuller list of where the two rulebooks split is in our page on how the college and professional rules differ.
The games that changed the rule
Three marathon games mark the format's history, and the third one broke it.
Arkansas 58, Ole Miss 56, on November 3, 2001, was the first game to go seven overtimes. It ended when an Ole Miss two-point try came up short. Two years later, on November 1, 2003, Arkansas did it again, beating Kentucky 71-63 in seven. These games were treated as curiosities, proof that the format could produce drama without limit.
By November 24, 2018, the mood had changed. Texas A&M beat LSU 74-72 in seven overtimes in College Station, a game that lasted close to five hours and left both rosters spent. The conversation afterward was about snap counts, and about how many more plays the format could ask of a defense that had already finished a full game.
The NCAA acted in two steps.
In 2019 it kept the first four overtimes as they were and ordered that from the fifth period teams would alternate two-point plays instead of full possessions. It also added the short rest breaks after the second and fourth periods.
In 2021 it went further. The mandatory two-point try moved from the third overtime to the second, and the alternating plays moved from the fifth period to the third. The longest a team's offense can now be on the field in overtime is two drives from the 25.
- 25Yard line where each possession starts
- 3Yard line for the two-point plays
- 3Overtime period in which the shootout begins
- 9Most overtime periods played in one game
Yard lines and periods are from the NCAA extra-period rules in force since 2021. The record is Illinois v Penn State on October 23, 2021, and stood through the 2024 season.
Illinois and Penn State needed only a few months to test the new version to destruction. Whether the game proved the reform right or wrong depends on what one wanted from it. It was shorter in snaps than any of the seven-overtime games. It was also, for five straight periods, a sequence of failed plays from the 3-yard line watched by a stadium that had stopped knowing how to react.
The records: nine overtimes, then eight
Through the 2024 season, seven games between two Football Bowl Subdivision teams had gone seven overtimes or more, and an eighth was an FBS team's home loss to a visitor from the Championship Subdivision. The list grows slowly, and the totals below will move if another game joins it.
| Overtimes | Game | Date | Final score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Illinois at Penn State | October 23, 2021 | Illinois 20, Penn State 18 |
| 8 | Georgia Tech at Georgia | November 29, 2024 | Georgia 44, Georgia Tech 42 |
| 7 | Eastern Kentucky (FCS) at Bowling Green | September 10, 2022 | Eastern Kentucky 59, Bowling Green 57 |
| 7 | Arkansas at Ole Miss | November 3, 2001 | Arkansas 58, Ole Miss 56 |
| 7 | Arkansas at Kentucky | November 1, 2003 | Arkansas 71, Kentucky 63 |
| 7 | North Texas v FIU | 2006 | North Texas 25, FIU 22 |
| 7 | Western Michigan v Buffalo | 2017 | Western Michigan 71, Buffalo 68 |
| 7 | LSU at Texas A&M | November 24, 2018 | Texas A&M 74, LSU 72 |
The three games played since 2021 are not comparable with the five older ones, and the record book makes no attempt to say so. A ninth overtime in 2021 was one snap for each team. A seventh overtime in 2003 was a pair of full drives. Measured in plays, the old seven-overtime games remain the longest ever staged.
The low score in the North Texas and FIU game shows that the old format did not guarantee a shootout either. That one crawled through seven periods with field goals missed along the way.
Georgia's win over Georgia Tech is the longest game a Southeastern Conference team has played, by overtime count, and it came in a rivalry game with playoff position riding on it. Records set under the two-point format may fall more easily than the old ones did, because a period that takes two plays can pile up quickly when two goal-line defenses are having a good night.
Before 1996: ties, the Kansas plan and the last 3-3 game
For the first century and more of college football a level score at the final gun was a result. Ties went into the record with their own column, and some of them are among the most argued-about games ever played. Notre Dame and Michigan State finished 10-10 on November 19, 1966, with the national championship at stake and Notre Dame running out the clock. Auburn kicked a field goal in the final seconds of the Sugar Bowl on January 1, 1988 to tie Syracuse 16-16, a decision Syracuse supporters took personally.
The tie shaped strategy in ways that have vanished. Trailing by one with seconds left, a coach had to decide whether a draw was acceptable. Nebraska's Tom Osborne decided it was not in the Orange Bowl on January 2, 1984, went for two against Miami when a kick would probably have secured the national title, and lost 31-30.
Where the format came from
The possession-from-a-fixed-spot idea is older than its use in the major college game and was not invented by the NCAA. It came from high school football in Kansas, where in 1971 the state activities association adopted a tiebreaker giving each team four downs from the 10-yard line. It spread through the high school game as the "Kansas plan," and the NCAA's lower divisions took up versions of it for games that needed a winner, playoff games above all. High schools in most states still use the 10-yard line, under procedures published by the National Federation of State High School Associations and adapted by each state.
The top division held out longest. It had no playoff, and bowl games were exhibitions that could end level without breaking a bracket.
That changed with the 1995 postseason, when the NCAA applied its tiebreaker to bowl games, with possessions starting at the 25 rather than the high school 10. It was needed almost immediately. In the Las Vegas Bowl on December 14, 1995, Toledo beat Nevada 40-37 in the first overtime game in the history of Division I-A. From the 1996 season the procedure applied to every game.
The last tie had been played less than three weeks before that bowl. On November 25, 1995, Wisconsin and Illinois finished 3-3, a score that stands as a fair argument for what replaced it. The history of the postseason games that brought overtime in is told in our guide to why bowl games exist, and the rest of the college section is collected on the United States hub.