How College Football Works

Conferences and the Regular Season

The four biggest conferences, often called the Power Four, are the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC. The other six FBS conferences (the American, Conference USA, the MAC, the Mountain West, the Pac-12 and the Sun Belt) are known as the Group of Six. A few schools, most famously Notre Dame, play as independents with no conference.

Most of a team’s schedule is conference games; the rest are non-conference games, usually early in the season. With only a dozen games, every loss matters: one or two can decide whether a team makes the playoff.

College football games never end in a tie. Overtime continues until there’s a winner.

Overtime Rules

College overtime works nothing like the NFL’s. There’s no game clock. Instead, each overtime period gives both teams one possession, and whoever is ahead after both possessions wins. The choice of which team goes first alternates each period.

First overtime

Each team starts a drive at the opponent’s 25-yard line. After a touchdown, a team can kick the extra point or go for two.

Second overtime

Same drives from the 25, but after a touchdown a team must go for two. No extra-point kicks.

Third overtime and beyond

There are no more drives. Teams trade single two-point conversion attempts from the 3-yard line: one play each, and if one team converts and the other doesn’t, the game is over. This continues until someone wins, which is why games that go this far end with scores like 29–27.

Timeouts

Timeouts left over from regulation don’t carry into overtime. Each team gets one timeout in each of the first two overtime periods. From the third overtime on, each team gets just one more timeout for the rest of the game.

Because overtime has no clock, SportRec’s charts give each overtime period an equal section after the fourth quarter. Two-point plays that decide a game from the third overtime on are marked 2PT.

Rankings

Two rankings matter. The AP Top 25, voted by media members, comes out every week of the season and is the number you’ll see next to a team’s name on most broadcasts. Starting in early November, the College Football Playoff selection committee releases its own weekly Top 25. That’s the ranking that decides who makes the playoff and how teams are seeded.

The College Football Playoff

Twelve teams make the playoff. For the 2026 season, these teams get automatic bids:

• The conference champions of the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC, wherever they’re ranked.
• The highest-ranked Group of Six team, whether or not it won its conference.
• Notre Dame, if it finishes in the committee’s top 12.

The rest of the field is filled by the highest-ranked remaining teams. Seeding follows the committee’s final ranking straight down: the top four teams get first-round byes, whether or not they won their conference.

• First round: seeds 5 through 12 play on the higher seed’s campus (5 hosts 12, 6 hosts 11, 7 hosts 10, 8 hosts 9).
• Quarterfinals and semifinals: played at major bowl games that rotate each year among the Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Fiesta and Peach Bowls.
• National championship: a standalone game at a neutral site, January 25, 2027 in Las Vegas.

The playoff stays at 12 teams for 2026 after the conferences couldn’t agree on expanding it. The format has changed every season since 2024, so check back before next year.

Bowl Season

Teams that miss the playoff but reach six wins (typically the bar) are bowl eligible and are matched into dozens of bowl games from mid December to early January. Bowls are standalone games: they don’t lead anywhere, but they’re often a team’s last game of the year and a preview of next season.