Complex sentence: This was the first Bedlam game in the series to go into overtime; there had been seven ties, but they had all come before the OT rules had been put into place in the 1996 season.
Split into simpler sentences: This was the first Bedlam game in the series to go into overtime. There had been seven ties, but they had all come before the OT rules had been put into place in the 1996 season.