Big Ten Announces Football Tiebreaking Procedures
The conference has announced how it will determine who plays in the Big Ten Championship Game in the event of a tie in the standings.
Ties. We all hate them.
When it’s a tie game, nobody wins.
It’s why everybody loves the fact that college football has overtime (unless you’re talking about EA Sports College Football which has an overtime-related programming bug IYKYK).
While there may never be another UCLA-USC football game that ends in a tie, the likelihood of there being a season with a tie in the standings is still very real, and for that reason, every conference needs a tie-breaking procedure to determine which schools will have the opportunity to play in the conference championship game and quite possibly the College Football Playoff.
As the Bruins open the 2024 season this week, it helps knowing exactly what procedure our new conference will use in the event of a tie, even if we all have very modest expectations this year for the first season of both the Big Ten and the DeShaun Foster eras.
Yesterday, the Big Ten laid that process out.
In addition to having four new teams join the conference from the Pac-12, the Big Ten has also eliminated divisions from the equation. As such, the top two teams in the conference standings will play for the conference championship, much in the same way that the Pac-12 had eliminated divisions last season.
Before I get into the nuts and bolts of the tiebreaker, it’s probably worth mentioning that the winner of the Big Ten Championship Game is an automatic qualifier to the expanded, 12-team College Football Playoff.
That isn’t the only change to the CFP this year.
The four highest-ranked conference champions will be seeded one through four and will receive a first-round bye. The fifth conference champion will be seeded where it was ranked or at No. 12 if it is outside the top 12 rankings. Non-conference champions and independents like Notre Dame ranked in the top four will be seeded beginning at No. 5. Because of this, the seeding, 1 through 12, could look different than the final rankings. Please re-read that at least once in order to digest that because it can be confusing that a team ranked in the Top Four may not be seeded one through four.
With that out of the way, let’s get back to the Big Ten Tiebreaking Procedure. According to that procedure, this is how ties in the conference standings will be broken if two teams are tied:
If two teams are tied the following steps…will be followed until a determination is made:
1. If two teams are tied for the No. 1 position in the standings, both teams will participate in the championship game and the winner of the game between the two teams shall be the first-place team. If the two teams tied for the No. 1 position did not play, move to step A.3 below to determine the first-place team.
2. If two teams are tied for the No. 2 position in the standings, the winner of the game between the two tied teams shall be the representative. If the two teams did not play, move to next step in tiebreaker.
3. The records of the two tied teams will be compared based on record against all common conference opponents.
4. The records of the two tied teams will be compared based on record against common opponents with the best conference record and proceeding through the common conference opponents based on their order of finish within the conference standings.
5. The records of the two tied teams will be compared based on the best cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents: (a) In the event of an unbalanced schedule (i.e., less than nine conference games are played), the records of the two tied teams will be compared based on the best cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents, regardless of how many conference opponents each team played. If winning percentage is equal for all conference opponents, move to next step in tiebreaker.
6. The representative will be chosen by the by the highest ranking by SportSource Analytics (team Rating Score metric) following the regular season.
7. Random draw among the tied teams conducted by Commissioner or designee.
On the other hand, Section B of the tiebreaking procedure deals with ties involving three or more teams. Section B reads:
If three or more teams are tied for first place in the standings, the following steps in Section B will be followed until a determination is made.
After the head-to-head competition among the tied teams, if a tiebreaker step produces standings with a clear No. 1 team by itself among the tied teams, that team is selected for the championship game and the remaining teams still in contention revert to the beginning of the applicable tiebreaker procedures (e.g., if there are three teams, the No. 1 team is in the championship game and the other two teams go to the first step of the two-team tiebreaker procedures; if there are four teams, the No. 1 team is in the 2 championship game and the other three teams go to the first step of the three-team tiebreaker procedures, etc.).
If a tiebreaker step produces results with two teams tied for No. 1, they are both selected for the championship game. To decide the ranking of the two teams, they will progress through the two-team tiebreaker procedures.
If a tiebreaker step produces results with two teams tied for a position other than No. 1, the winner of the game between the two tied teams shall be the representative. If the two teams did not play, move to two-team tiebreaker above. If three or more teams remain tied after any step, move to next step in tiebreaker with remaining tied teams.
If a tiebreaker step produces results with one team being eliminated from proceeding to the next step in the tiebreaker process, the team that is eliminated shall not be pulled back into the tiebreaker for any future step(s).
If all teams involved in the tie are tied after any step, all teams will continue to the next step in the tiebreaker procedures.
1. The records of the three (or more) tied teams will be compared based on winning percentage in games among the tied teams: (a) If all teams involved in the tie did not play each other, but one team defeated all other teams involved in the tie, the team that defeated all other teams in the tie is removed from the tiebreaker, and the remaining teams revert to the beginning of the applicable tiebreaker process (i.e., two team or three or more team tie). (b) If all teams involved in the tie did not play each other and no team defeated all other teams involved in the tie, move to the next step in tiebreaker.
2. The records of the three (or more) tied teams will be compared based on winning percentage against all common conference opponents played by all other teams involved in the tie.
3. The records of the three (or more) tied teams will be compared based on winning percentage against the next highest placed common opponent in the standings in order of finish:
4. The records of the three (or more) tied teams will be compared based on the best cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents: (a) In the event of an unbalanced schedule (i.e., less than nine conference games are played), the records of the three (or more) tied teams will be compared based on the best cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents, regardless of how many conference opponents each team played. If winning percentage is equal for all conference opponents, move to next step in tiebreaker.
5. The representative will be chosen by the by the highest ranking by SportSource Analytics (team Rating Score metric) following the regular season.
6. Random draw among the tied teams conducted by Commissioner or designee.
A team or teams that are not eligible to participate in a postseason football bowl game because of NCAA and/or Big Ten sanctions shall not be eligible to participate in the Big Ten Football Championship Game. If one or both Big Ten teams with the highest winning percentage after the regular season is ineligible to play in the Big Ten Championship Game, then the participant(s) in the Big Ten Championship Game shall be determined by the following procedure:
a) If the ineligible team is tied for the No. 1 position in the standings, then the teams in the No. 2 and No. 3 position in the standings shall be the Big Ten Championship Game representatives.
b) If two or more teams are tied with an ineligible team for the No. 1 or No. 2 position in the standings, then the ineligible team is removed and the remaining teams revert to the tiebreak procedure.
If the championship game cannot be played (due to any reason beyond the control of the Big Ten Conference), the two teams with the highest winning percentage at the end of the regular season (using championship game tiebreakers as set forth above) shall be declared co-champions and the following procedure will be used to determine the Big Ten Conference AQ representative to the College Football Playoff:
a) If the two teams met previously in the season, the winner of the game between the two teams shall be the AQ.
b) If the two representatives did not meet previously during the season, the records of the two tied teams will be compared based on record against all common conference opponents.
c) If the two teams remain tied after b), the records of the two tied teams will be compared based on record against common opponents with the best conference record and proceeding through the common conference opponents based on their order of finish within the conference standings.
d) If the two teams remain tied after c), The records of the two tied teams will be compared based on the best cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents: a. In the event of an unbalanced schedule (i.e., less than nine conference games are played), the records of the two tied teams will be compared based on the best cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents, regardless of how many conference opponents each team played. If winning percentage is equal for all conference opponents, move to next step in tiebreaker.
e) If the two teams remain tied after d), the representative will be determined by the highest ranking by SportSource Analytics (team Rating Score metric) following the regular season.
f) If the two teams remain tied after e), the representative shall be determined by a random draw by the Commissioner or designee.
Got it? Good. LOL
Personally, I’ll be happy if the Bruins are in the conversation about possibly making the Big Ten Championship Game this year.
Go Bruins!!!
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I read it, started getting confused, got distracted and disinterested, and now I am just bookmarking this page for future (and hopefully never) reference when there is data to plug in.
I think the NCAA has to move into one league with a N S E W division, say 10 teams in each. Then a wild card game and regular playoffs seeded just like the nfl. It's the only thing that makes sense. And yes I know the NCAA doesn't recognize football, but that can change, there's no law against it.