That's awesome analysis Medina! Thanks so much. I loved that breakdown of the 3 undefeated teams.
I guess in addition to needing Neb and NW to catch fire, Indiana needs ILL and Wisc to start losing.
I don't know how you did it, but that's pretty simple to understand.
Thanks.
I am rooting for ILL to upset Oregon, because that would be chaos!
But that would at least solve the problem of possibly having 3 undefeated teams at end. (and create a whole new possible problem of having a whole bunch of one loss teams tie for first place if OSU also beats Ind and PSU later)
FWIW, this seems simpler because H2H solves it. Your assumptions:
- Illinois upsets Oregon and wins out to finish 8-1.
- Ohio State wins out (including beating PSU and IU) and finishes 8-1.
- After losing this weekend to IL, Oregon wins out and finishes 8-1.
- Penn State loses to Ohio State but otherwise wins out and finishes 8-1.
- Indiana loses in Columbus on 11/23 but otherwise wins out and finishes 8-1.
So there are five 8-1 teams and all others have at least two losses (Wisconsin is currently 3-1 but in this scenario they would lose to both PSU and Ore).
H2H amongst the five 8-1 teams:
- 2-1 Ohio State: Beat PSU and IU, lost to Ore
- 1-1 Oregon: Beat tOSU, lost to IL.
- 1-1 Penn State: Beat IL, lost to tOSU.
- 1-1 Illinois: Beat Ore, lost to PSU.
- 0-1 Indiana: Lost to tOSU.
H2H is the first tiebreaker so the Buckeyes win, get the #1 seed, and will wear home jerseys in the B1GCG.
Except, no they don't because the fine print states that H2H only prevails if one team defeated all the others so we move on to the next step:
Record against all common conference opponents:
- The only conference opponent common to all five is Purdue whom each would have defeated so move on to:
Record against the next highest placed common opponent:
- This obviously doesn't help either so move to:
Best cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents:
So we are back where we started except that now we have five teams involved. Purdue is a common opponent of all five so we can ignore them and look at each teams' other eight opponents. With these five that involves all 18 teams in the league (17 after eliminating PU since they all played PU) so here it is:

Just eyeballing it, it *LOOKS* to me like this favors Ohio State because the Buckeyes have IU, Ore, and PSU while none of the others have three of the 8-1 teams. Ohio State also has decent Iowa, Michigan, MSU, and UNL teams and their only really bad opponent is NU which in any case is a common opponent with IL and IU. My guess for 2nd would be Oregon over PSU because I *THINK* Michigan and MSU are better than MN and USC but that could be close.
Then the B1G tiebreaker procedures get a little weird. It states "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 1 championship game and the other three teams go to the first step of the three-team tiebreaker procedures, etc.). "
I read that to mean that tOSU is in the B1GCG and the other four revert to the multi-team tiebreaker but without tOSU (or is IU excluded since they lost on the original H2H?). If you look at H2H WITHOUT tOSU in this scenario:
- 1-0 Penn State: beat IL
- 1-1 Illinois: beat Ore, lost to PSU
- 0-0 Indiana: DNP PSU, IL, nor Ore
- 0-1 Oregon: lost to IL.
If I'm reading that right, it helps PSU and hurts Oregon because it takes away PSU's H2H loss and Oregon's H2H win so PSU goes to the B1GCG to play tOSU. If anybody else (lawyers like
@ELA @MaximumSam @MarqHusker ?) wants to read the tiebreaker and tell me what you think, here is the link:
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://assets.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltca750cef518bc6e4/blt2bf0c27b5714240c/66cc95d319b683cdf2088edf/2024_Big_Ten_Football_Tiebreaker_-_FINAL[10][72].pdf