Big 12 announces football tiebreaker procedures
The Big 12 will once again have “One True Champion” in football.
A season after the conference was roundly mocked for a slogan that wasn’t put into practice when Baylor beat TCU but both teams were declared co-champions when they finished with the same league record, the Big 12 will institute a tiebreaker procedure this fall.
Bob Bowlsby: Big 12 will keep One True Champion motto, jokes it's appropriate now with tiebreaker.
— Jon Solomon (@JonSolomonCBS) May 6, 2015
In the case of a head-to-head tie, the team that won the regular-season matchup will be declared champion. The Big 12 is the only power-five conference that plays a complete round-robin schedule, so every team plays each other once.
If three or more teams are tied, these steps will be followed to eliminate teams from consideration. If only two teams remain tied after any step, the head-to-head tiebreaker will declare the champion:
1. The conference records of the teams will be compared against each other. For example, if Team A beat Team B and C during the regular season, it would be declared champion. If all three teams are 1-1 against each other, it’s on to Step 2:
2. The conference records of the teams will be compared against the next highest-placed team. For example, if three teams are tied and Team A beat the fourth-place team and Team B and C did not, Team A is the champion. If only one team was eliminated through this procedure, the head-to-head matchup between the two remaining would settle the tie. If all three beat the fourth-place team, their records would be compared against the fifth-place team, and so on.
2a. If there is a two-way tie among the next highest-placed teams (example: three-way tie for first, two-way tie for fourth), the head-to-head tiebreaker will be applied before the comparison against the teams tied for first begins.
2b. If there is a three-or-more-way tie among the next highest-place teams (example: three-way tie for first, three-way tie for fourth), the record of the tied first-place teams against the collective tied teams would be used.
3. Scoring differential among the tied teams will be used: the team with the lowest difference between points scored and allowed in games against the tied teams are eliminated from consideration.
4. Draw.
This story was originally published May 6, 2015 at 4:10 PM with the headline "Big 12 announces football tiebreaker procedures."