The Big 12 logo on the field at Arizona State’s Mountain America Stadium symbolizes a college football season that is underway. The conference announced its tiebreaker plan Friday for its 2024 football championship game. (Photo by Kevin Abele/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
PHOENIX – On the eve of Week 2 games for Arizona and Arizona State, the schools learned more about how their new conference will crown its champion.
The Big 12 Friday announced its new tie-breaking policy, which determines who will play in the conference title game if there is a tie.
Both teams are 1-0 and host games Saturday night. The Wildcats face Northern Arizona and the Sun Devils will take on Mississippi State.
With Arizona, ASU, Colorado and Utah joining the league this year, the Big 12 needed a more comprehensive tie-breaking system. The conference now has 16 teams and removed divisions in 2011.
The other three Power Four conferences – the ACC, Big 10 and SEC – scrapped their divisions this year after expanding. The latter two announced their tie-breaking policies in August.
If two teams are tied in the Big 12 standings, the conference will take the following steps:
- The tied teams will be compared based on their head-to-head record during the season.
- The tied teams will be compared based on win percentage against all common conference opponents.
- The tied teams will be compared based on win percentage against the next highest-placed common opponent in the standings (based on the record in all games played within the Conference) proceeding through the standings.
- The tied teams will be compared based on combined win percentage in conference games of conference opponents.
- The tied teams will be compared based on total number of wins in a 12-game season.
- The representative will be chosen based on highest ranking by SportSource Analytics (team rating score metric) following the last weekend of regular-season games.
- The representative will be chosen by a coin toss.
What happens if there’s a three-way tie?
The league has plans for that as well.
“After one team has an advantage and is “seeded,” all remaining teams in the multiple-team tiebreaker will repeat the tie-breaking procedure. If at any point the multiple-team tie is reduced to two teams, the two-team tie-breaking procedure will be applied,” the Big 12 said in a statement.
The Conference also reminded fans that Saturday’s Utah-Baylor game will not count as a conference game. The two schools were already scheduled to play before the Utes joined the conference. The same goes for Arizona’s Week 3 game against Kansas State, which will officially be a nonconference game for the same reason.
The Wildcats will visit a former Pac 12 foe, No. 11 Utah, for its formal Big 12 opener Sept. 28 at Rice-Eccles Stadium.
ASU begins conference play at home against No. 19 Kansas on Oct. 5 at Mountain America Stadium.