Welcome to the new look Big Ten featuring 18 teams that now include intriguing West Coast newbies Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington. The conference has officially done away with divisions and in anticipation of teams sharing records, the Big Ten has now announced its tiebreakers for regular-season champion.
As most would expect, the first tiebreaker listed is head-to-head matchups, but with 18 teams and each team only playing nine conference opponents, there is a chance that head-to-head won’t cut it. When divisions did exist, this was the main tiebreaker needed considering everyone played each other in their own division. In this current iteration of the conference it is possible that four-teams could tie and not all four would have played each other.
The following is the list of tiebreakers released by the Big Ten in order:
- Head-to-head results during the regular season
- Record against all common conference opponents
- Record against mutual conference opponents with best record
- Best Big Ten winning percentage of conference opponents
- Highest ranking by SportSource Analytics after the regular season
- Random draw of tied teams
Got to love when a good old fashioned random draw is an option. I understand that the Big Ten was getting sick of the West Division not pulling its weight in the Big Ten Championship game, but it really does feel like getting rid of divisions was an overreaction.
The new #B1GFootball tiebreaking procedures for the 2024 Discover #B1GFCG
More details here: https://t.co/dHmqU5gx2K pic.twitter.com/Mos3S2RFVe
— Big Ten Football (@B1Gfootball) August 26, 2024
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