http://www.fanblogs.com/ncaa/007866.php
Conference Tie Breakers
What are the tie breakers for each conference? To list them all would take a great deal of space. Since they have a large degree similarities I can condense them somewhat. The conference tiebreakers are listed in order by capital letters. The key for these letters are as follows:
Key to tie breakers
A) Head to head among tied teams
B) Record against teams within the same division
C) Results vs opponents within the same division with the best record, repeated through the team with the worse record.
D) Common conference opponents
E) All non-division opponents
F) Results vs all conference opponents with the best record, repeated through the team with the worse record
G) BCS Standings
H) BCS standings, unless top two are within 5 rankings, then head to head of top two in the BCS standings.
I) Combined Record of non-division opponents
J) Eliminate the team with the most recent BCS automatic qualification (or Rose Bowl appearance)
K) Best overall W-L Record
L) Eliminate teams not eligible for post season play
M) Least number of FCS teams played
N) Draw
Tie breakers
ACC
A B C (I if three or more teams) D (E if only two teams are tied) F G N
Big East
A G
Big 10
L A M K J
Big 12
A B C D G K N
PAC 10
A F G J
SEC
A B C E D F H
Notes
Tie breakers only apply to selection for conference title games and for BCS automatic qualifications for conferences not having a championship game. The order of bowls relative to a conference are selection order and may differ from the order in the official standings, if the bowls so chose.
I have eliminated cases that deal with ties and cases where a full schedule is not played. Except where indicated, the rules are parallel for 2 team ties and those involving more than two teams. It is amazing to me how convoluted a conference can describe head to head tie breakers and all the cases involved with ties. By head to head I mean only games between the teams in the tie are considered and these results compared.
All the cases involving ties (say, if a game is unable to be finished while the score is tied and the coaches agree to a tie) are equivalent to treating them as a half win - half loss.
For conferences with round robins or a divisional structure, head to head will break all two team ties, since overtime rules have eliminated tied games. Thus the ACC's list beyond head to head is not possible in football.
The BCS standings have never been tied at any spot. With the current number of pollsters and computers the odds of a tie at a given location (the lowest common denominator of a sum of fractions with the number of voters in each denominator) are about 1 in 14,000. If a single coach is eliminated from the coaches poll this reduces to 1 in 7,000. If an additional voter is added to the Harris Poll the odds further reduce to 1 in 1,400, while two less Harris voters reduce the odds to 1 in 2,300.
The odds of a tie anywhere in the top 25 is about 1 in 500, or once every 72 years with 7 BCS standings posted per year. We are not likely to see a meaningful tie in the BCS standings any time soon.
Posted by Ben Prather
