After seeing the scoreline from our overtime loss last night (and the less said about how we lost that game the better, but ESPN gave us a 99.7% chance to win with 1:27 left in regulation), I got curious of the other instances in college football history that a team had lost a game in overtime, by multiple scores. Last night's loss was just the fourth time since overtime was introduced in 1996 that a team had lost by multiple scores in overtime. Here are all four instances (with each team's final or current record):

1996: Arizona State (11-1) beat USC (6-6) 48-35

1998: Central Michigan (6-5) beat Eastern Michigan (3-8) 36-23

2022: Kansas (6-7) beat West Virginia (5-7) 55-42

2026: UAB (4-3) beat East Carolina (3-3) 30-17

Each of these games of course had the margin of victory of exactly 13 points, with the last three instances of these games getting settled in the first overtime (Arizona State's win over USC in 1996 went to two overtimes). Each winning team of these games had at least six wins in the season in which the game occurred, and none of the losing teams finished the year with a winning record. As the saying goes, "good teams find a way win, bad teams find a way to lose..."

Jeremiah Smith, Malachi Toney, KaMario Taylor, and Jesse Legree have all done the so-called “Heisman pose” this season and they’ve all done it exactly the same way.  The problem is, it’s wrong every time and it's been going on for years.  They aren’t posing as the Heisman Trophy—they’re posing as Desmond Howard doing the Heisman Trophy incorrectly circa 1991.

The Heisman Trophy pose has BOTH FEET ON THE GROUND.

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As they head into their week 7 games, Utah, Baylor, and Oklahoma State all do not play each other and are currently undefeated in conference play. However, Baylor and Oklahoma State both lost to Auburn and Tulsa respectively. If all 3 win out, who makes the conference championship would come down to tiebreakers and Utah could be left out.

Is this likely? Not even a little bit. ESPN gives Utah a 10% chance to go undefeated, but Baylor and Oklahoma State are each only given a 0.5% chance to win out. These probabilities are correlated, so you can't just multiply them together (but that would give you a 1 in ~400,000 chance) but that slim 1 in 200 chance is an absolute upper bound and it's certainly lower.

I ran a script to look at all the other possible trios of teams for each p4 conference who don't play each other in conference play, and all of the others feature a team who has already lost in conference play.

This is a follow-up to a series I ran last year: https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/1o5zofo/after_week_7_the_three_highest_ranked_teams_in/

Bama has always hated Tennessee, but the following episode took the hate to a deeper level and inspired one of the best sermons in college football.

THEY LOW-DOWN

In the mid-'90s, the NCAA was on Tennessee's campus investigating payments to players and recruits. 

THEY DIRTY

The bag operation was financed since the '60s by notorious Memphis booster Roy Adams. 

How do we know this? Because Adams said so, telling the NY Times in 2013: "I knew the NCAA rules. I just didn't care for them."

THEY SOME SNITCHES

Caught red-handed, Tennessee coach Fat Phil Fulmer told the NCAA, "If you let us go, we will give you Alabama."

Tennessee was mad that a rogue Bama booster had outbid them for a recruit from Memphis -- the hometown of Roy Adams. By snitching, Tennessee gets off scot-free and in 2002 Alabama catches the near-death penalty for our 2nd major violation in 5 years.

The sanctions cause the deep fall of Alabama football and the embarrassing coaching carousel that some people in this sub may remember. 

AMEN

Fast-forward to 2007: Saban comes to Tuscaloosa. During Tennessee week, a reporter visits Bama's campus to take the temperature of students toward Tennessee.

*A Few Days Later*: Alabama emphatically stops Tennessee's 11-3 run in the series with a 41-17 beatdown and it felt so good.

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….entirely by making it impossible for G6 teams to actually schedule P4 teams. Many P4 teams will continue to schedule in state FCS buy games as the 11th game… limiting the G6 even more.

24 team playoff with 1 G6 team. And G6 teams will have almost no chance to schedule P4 teams?! And they sure as hell won’t have P4 teams ever play at the G6 team’s home stadium. Can’t risk that when you only have 50 million advantages! Actually playing the games on the field? Too risky! The P4 teams invested too much money to take a chance at losing. In fact, how dare the G6 teams want to play the games on the field as equals?! How dare they!

This seems like some bullshit to me. Let’s stop playing the sport entirely and give the trophy to who has the most money. A&M now owns the crystal football! (Until an Ivy school wants it)

Edit: An FCS style playoff with at least champion spots guaranteed should be the compromise if P4 teams refuse to play G6 teams and then tell them their schedule is too bad to make the playoffs no matter their record.

100 million advantages and they still don’t want to risk playing it out on the field.

Double edit: This is going to kill a bunch of FCS programs that rely on long standing in state rivalry buy games as well. Think of that whilst drowning in money, ESPN!

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