Going 1st vs Going 2nd in Overtime in NCAAF

The conventional wisdom in college football is that once a game goes to overtime, the ideal strategy is to go second. That way you know exactly what you need to score to extend the game or win it outright, similar to batting in the bottom of the inning in baseball.

I sought to find out if past results support this idea. I looked at every game that went to overtime in the past two seasons, and then took the final overtime period to determine which team went first or second (so in a 3OT game, for example, the team that went second in that third OT was the team that ultimately went second to end the game). Over 67 games, the team that went second won 55.22% of the time. Testing this against the hypothesis of 50% (it doesn't matter whether you go first or second) gave a corresponding p-value of 0.197. This isn't definitive, but this does give some slight evidence that going second is the correct strategy.