Big Ten reveals football tiebreakers for 18-team conference

By Kevin Kelley -

The Big Ten announced on Monday its new football tiebreaking procedures for the 2024 Big Ten Championship Game. The season will mark the first for the conference with 18 teams following the addition of Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington.

The 2024 Big Ten Championship Game will also mark the first time in conference history that the contest will feature the top two teams in the overall conference standings.

In the event of a tie between teams competing for a place in the Big Ten Championship Game, the league will utilize the following procedures in descending order until the tie is broken:

  1. The tied teams will be compared based on head-to-head matchups during the regular season.
  2. The tied teams will be compared based on record against all common conference opponents.
  3. The tied teams will be compared based on record against common opponents with the best conference record and proceeding through the common conference opponents based on their order of finish within the conference standings.
  4. The tied teams will be compared based on the best cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents.
  5. The representative will be chosen based on the highest ranking by SportSource Analytics (team Rating Score metric) following the regular season.
  6. The representative will be chosen by random draw among the tied teams conducted by the Commissioner or designee.

For additional information on the Big Ten tie-breakers, the league has published a three-page document on its official website.

The 2024 Big Ten Championship Game is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 7 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Ind. The game will be televised by CBS at 8:00pm ET.

Big Ten Football Schedule

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Comments (20)

Cmon now Christian I think we all can appreciate Dan Rakow and his insights.

Can’t wait for College Football to crank it up!

Ben thank you very much for your nice compliment that you made about my insights.

At least I am ignoring what Christian says like stupid, dumb or blockhead like Lucy Van Pelt would say to Charlie Brown plus I learn a big lesson from unpopular war that I had with Z-Man which I credit myself to end carnage & did not want any part of Z-Man.

It is inevitable in one (or more) of these superconferences that there will be a 4-way or 5-way tie (see 1990 Big Ten) that will upset one or more fanbases with enough frequency that there will be calls for a 4-team conference playoff. It won’t happen before 2026, but it will eventually happen. It would be real easy to implement. Simply move the Army-Navy game to week 0 as the very first regular season game annually, instead of the very last regular season game annually, and have the conference championship games a week later than they are played now.

Currently I am more focused on 2024 College Football regular season & save postseason when time come.

Or we may actually see the divisions be incorporated again, both to address the tie breakers but to also reduce travel expenses and reestablish the historical/regional rivalries lost. It also seems inevitable that all conferences not only go to 9 games but maybe even schedule 10 from pressure from the Media Rights holders.

Conference championship games aren’t necessary any more with the advent of the expanded playoffs. I hope that conferences will get rid of them in the coming years.

For the B10 and SEC, who ends up in the CCG or not just doesn’t matter that much (as they will get 3-5 teams in to the CFP every year) so no, I don’t see a 4-team conference playoff for the P2 unless the CFP format changes.

Shoehorning in a 4-team conference playoff may make sense for the B12 or ACC, however.

As a fan of conference games they will be more better now that divisions are now phased out.

Dolt, it was a joke. Maybe you should leave? Oh, wait. You won’t leave well enough alone and will retort to get the last word. You missed the joke, so now you gotta go into defense-mode to unsuccessfully not look stupid. So go ahead, knock yourself out. I’ll getcha a hammer.

Please ignore Christian Andrews posts he likes to aggravate everybody & I have zero concerns over him.