The Big Ten released their own Tiebreaker rules today
https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/big-ten-football-tiebreakers-how-conference-will-decide-championship-game-matchup-with-divisions-gone-away/amp/
- 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
The first four tiebreakers are consistent with those released by the SEC. However, the SEC opted to move towards a point-differential tiebreaker at No. 5.
The Big Ten followed the Big 12 in leaning on an analytics system to decide tiebreakers. This of course leads to the next question. How do the Sports source analytics rankings work?
We discussed this briefly in another thread but there is some minutiae that I want to tackle here:
This is hyper-technical and probably boring to most people but it will suddenly matter a LOT if it ends up being an issue which it probably will in our new enormous league.
The first tiebreaker is H2H but they don't bother to say whether the number of games matters. I find this to be a glaring oversight and the conference should know better. For multi-team ties, the #1 BB tiebreaker is:
"
1. Results of head-to-head competition during the regular-season.a. When comparing records against the tied teams, the team with the higher winning percentage shall prevail, even if the number of games played against the team or group are unequal (i.e., 2-0 is better than 3-1, but 2-0 is not better than 1-0).
b. After the top team among the tied teams is determined, the second team is ranked by its record among the original tied teams, not the head-to-head record vs. the remaining team(s)."
I guess we should assume that the same rules apply in FB as BB but why didn't they clarify?
The second tiebreaker looks pretty clear.
They made the same mistake with the third tiebreaker. Once again, the BB tiebreakers clarify:
"
2. If the remaining teams are still tied, then each tied team's record shall be compared to the team occupying the highest position in the final regular-season standings, continuing down through the standings until one team gains an advantage.a. When arriving at another pair of tied teams while comparing records, use each team's record against the collective tied teams as a group (prior to their own tie-breaking procedures), rather than the performance against the individual tied teams.
b. When comparing records against a single team or group of teams, the higher winning percentage shall prevail, even if the number of games played against the team or group are unequal (i.e., 2-0 is better than 3-1, but 2-0 is not better than 1-0)."
I would guess that nearly all ties that get to step-4 will be broken by step-4 but if not . . .
WTF is "SportSource Analytics"? Why not use CFP ranking?
