History was made on Saturday afternoon. The first nine overtime game (and first 8OT game) took place on the bye week for Auburn football program.
This gave Tiger fans the opportunity to watch the rest of the college football slate, and boy did a classic happen in Happy Valley.
#7 Penn State, the Tigers’ Week 3 opponent who used the 28-20 White Out win to propel themselves into the College Football Playoff competition (temporarily, at least), lost to an Illinois team that was 2-4 coming into the noon (eastern time) showdown at Beaver Stadium.
Judging by the nine overtimes, you’d think the over (45.5) hit. Nope. It was an 18-16 game that took until the eighth overtime for anyone to score the football from the 3-yard line.
Tiger fans were in disbelief over what they saw:
This is the most accidentally hilarious college football game I’ve ever watched.
— Pablo Escobarner (blue chek) (@PabloEscoburner) October 23, 2021
The wrong Orange and Blue team beat Penn State
— AJ Oaks 🦚 (@aj_oaks) October 23, 2021
This is absurd
— Darth Barner (@DarthBarner) October 23, 2021
The OT rules will be changed AGAIN after this season
— AUBURN SUPERFAN #2 (@MichaelFloyd_AU) October 23, 2021
Truthfully, this result isn’t one that will ultimately benefit Auburn football, even if some Tiger fans liked what they saw today based on the behavior shown to them by Penn State students on campus ahead of that Week 3 loss.
AU had been able to lean on the fact that their only two losses were to top 10 teams before today. Now, they need to win out and hope that the SEC West doesn’t drop any other non-conference games…unless the Tigers lose any of their final five games and need their divisional standing to improve.
Whether you loved or hated this result, though, if you tuned into ABC for Penn State-Illinois, you witnessed a historic instant classic.