College Football: Western Michigan and Buffalo break FBS scoring record in 7OT thriller

Western Michigan and Buffalo broke the FBS record for combined scoring and tied the record for longest overtime game in college football history in a 7OT thriller.

Western Michigan headed to Buffalo as a seven-point favorite on Saturday. Both teams were 3-2 coming into the MAC showdown between the Broncos and the Bulls on Saturday evening. It seemed like the interdivisional battle would be a fairly well-matched affair. Nobody could have anticipated the two teams would tie the FBS record for the longest overtime game in college football history.

The two teams traded the lead back and forth all game long. Western Michigan scored a touchdown on a 66-yard LeVante Bellamy run on the opening drive of the game. By the end of the first quarter Buffalo had pulled ahead for a 14-10 lead. The visiting Broncos pulled ahead 17-14 by halftime, and added another touchdown to pull ahead 24-14 midway through the third quarter.

Buffalo then scored 14 unanswered points to pull back ahead 28-24 with just over eight minutes remaining in the contest. Western Michigan promptly regained the lead on a touchdown pass from Jon Wassink to Donnie Ernsberger, going up 31-28 inside five minutes of regulation time.

The hosts tied the game 31-31 with 34 seconds remaining, but Western Michigan managed to get into position to win in regulation. Instead, Jarrett Franklin blocked Josh Grant’s 52-yard field goal attempt to send the game to overtime.

Then overtime started…

In the first overtime, Buffalo got the ball first and needed seven plays — and a penalty against Western Michigan on a 4th-and-9 field goal attempt — to go up 38-31. The Broncos came back and scored four plays later as Wassink and Ernsberger connected again. After tying the game again, it became a family affair as Ernsberger’s sister rushed on field to celebrate.

Both teams scored touchdowns in the second overtime period. Then Buffalo fumbled away its third possession, and Grant got another chance to win the game with a field goal. Josh Grant missed, though, and a fourth overtime ensued.

Western Michigan had the ball first in the fourth overtime, and put the pressure on Buffalo with another touchdown and a successful two-point conversion. The Bulls responded, and then scored again in the fifth overtime. WMU responded with their own score, and failed conversions on both sides made it 59-59.

As a result, the prolonged affair became just the fifth game in FBS history to go to six overtimes. Six more points each way helped the two teams climb up the record books even further, as no game had ever gone beyond seven overtimes. The Bulls and the Broncos went to a seventh extra frame, and this time WMU managed to hold Buffalo to a field goal.

That gave Western Michigan the opportunity to win on the next drive. Jarvion Franklin, the veteran Broncos running back, sealed the deal with a 12-yard run across the goal line.

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The 71-68 final score looked more like a basketball game than a college football game. Less than a year after Pitt and Syracuse set the FBS single-game scoring record, Western Michigan and Buffalo broke the mark by two points. In the end, the defending MAC champion Broncos survived after missing two previous chances to win earlier in the game to move to 4-2 on the year while Buffalo fell to 3-3 at the midway point of the season.