With a division-less format, things could get complicated
Texas A&M currently sits alone atop the SEC standings as the only team still with an unblemished conference record, and A&M fans are over the moon about it. But that doesn’t mean the Aggies can get comfortable by any stretch of the imagination. There are four other teams still with only one conference loss (Georgia, LSU, Tennessee Texas), all of which still have a feasible path to get to the SEC Championship Game in Atlanta on Saturday, Dec. 7. And with the SEC having done away with divisions, it’s even more likely than ever that tiebreaker scenarios will come into play to determine who gets to Atlanta (and that a team with high hopes as of now could end up at home).
So let’s talk SEC tiebreakers and give ourselves some baseline knowledge of how all of this could shake out.
With teams still having either three or four conference games remaining, t’s certainly too early to discuss individual scenarios. There’s just too many of them to make that exercise worthwhile. But I will give a few real-life examples as we go down the list of tiebreakers to better illustrate how they would be applied, and hopefully clear up some misconceptions of what matters, and what doesn’t.
The conference was remarkably late in announcing the new tiebreakers for this season, publishing them just 10 days before Week 1. For reference, the complete document can be viewed here.
Two-team tiebreakers
A. Head-to-head competition among the tied teams
Essentially, if the teams played one another, the winner of that game wins the tiebreaker. Clean. Simple. Easy.
B. Record versus all common conference opponents among the tied teams
If the two tied teams DID NOT play one another, the next tiebreaker is their record against all of the teams that both of them played. EXAMPLE: If A&M and Tennessee were tied, this would come down to each team’s record against Arkansas, Florida and Mississippi State (a tiebreaker A&M would win, by the way, since they went 3-0 in those games and Tennessee lost to Arkansas).
C. Record against highest (best) placed common Conference opponent in the Conference standings, and proceeding through the Conference standings among the tied teams
If the two tied teams have the same record against their common opponents, you start looking at their results in each of those individual games against the common opponents, starting with the team highest in the standings and working your way to the bottom until you find a game where one team won and the other lost. EXAMPLE: If Tennessee and Texas both win the rest of their games and ended up in a two-team tie, they have a whopping SEVEN common opponents, against which they’d each be 6-1. The common opponent who is highest in the standings would be Georgia, and so because Tennessee beat Georgia (hypothetically) and Texas lost to them, Tennessee would win that tiebreaker.
D. Cumulative Conference winning percentage of all Conference opponents among the tied teams
If you are STILL tied, the next tiebreaker would involve adding up all of the SEC wins and losses for all of the opponents on each team’s conference schedule and calculate the win percentage for those opponents. The team who has the higher conference opponents win percentage wins the tiebreaker. EXAMPLE: Say Georgia wins out and A&M loses to South Carolina but beats Auburn and Texas. That would mean the Aggies and Bulldogs would be one-loss teams who didn’t play one another, and both went 4-0 against their common opponents (Auburn, Florida, Mississippi State, Texas). So that tiebreaker WOULD get to this step. Obviously we don’t know the results of every game the rest of the way, so let’s just use current opponent win percentage for this example. A&M’s conference schedule has gone 16-20 (.444) while Georgia’s has gone 13-22 (.371). So because A&M’s combined SEC opponent win percentage is higher, A&M would win that tiebreaker.
E. Capped relative total scoring margin (see Appendix A) per SportSource Analytics versus all Conference opponents among the tied teams
This is a calculation done for each team that measures how you performed in each game relative to what your opponent normally allows (i.e., scoring more points that that opponent allows on average or holding your opponent to fewer points than they score on average is good). You can view the example calculation from the official document if you like, but to be honest this one just gives me tired-head. If it gets this far, just acknowledge that we won’t know who won until the tiebreaker until the SEC (or someone more mathematically inclined) lets us know.
F. Random draw of the tied teams
It seems pretty much impossible that any tiebreaker would get this far. But if it does, I just hope they do it at a small café right off the highway halfway between the two schools like they did in Friday Night Lights.
Three(or more)-team tiebreakers
Now that we’ve established what these tiebreakers are in their most simplistic form (if you want to call any of this “simple”), let’s talk about how they’d be applied when the tie is among three or more tied teams. Because this is where it can get a bit confusing. Technically, it’s the same tiebreakers being used, but with some subtle differences:
- The application of head-to-head results is quite tricky. This may be the most important distinction because it’s he one I’ve seen misunderstood the most. If all three (or more) teams played one another, you’d just tally each team’s record in those games and use that as the tiebreaker. But at least in 2024, there’s no combination of the five teams in contention that results in a three-team tie were everyone plays one another. So at least for this season, that aspect of the tiebreaker is moot. When there is not a complete round robin among the tied teams, here is what is important:
- If one team beat all the other tied teams, it is selected for the championship game, and the other remaining teams return to the start of the tiebreaker procedures for second place
- If one team lost to all the other tied teams, it is eliminated and the other teams return to the start of the applicable tiebreaker procedures, unless there are only two teams remaining, in which case they are both selected for the championship game
- If no team either beat all the other tied teams or lost to all the other tied teams, all the tied teams advance to the next tiebreaker procedure
EXAMPLE 1: Say Texas and Georgia both win out and end up in a three-way tie with A&M. Because A&M didn’t play Georgia, there is no round robin, and no team beat the other two OR lost to the other two, so you’d move on to the next tiebreaker step.
EXAMPLE 2: Texas loses to A&M (A&M moves on to the championship game) and Georgia beats Tennessee, but Tennessee loses one other game (say Vandy) to force a three-way tie with Texas, Georgia and Tennessee, all with two losses. In this scenario, even though Texas and Tennesee did not play, Georgia would win the tiebreaker because the Bulldogs beat both the Longhorns and the Vols.
- If a tiebreaker step produces a clear No. 1 team by itself, that team is selected for the championship game and the remaining tied teams still in contention revert to the beginning of the applicable tiebreaker procedures. Conversely, the same thing is true for if a tiebreaker step produces a clear No. 3 (or lower) team by itself. That team would be eliminated and, if necessary, the remaining tied teams would revert to the beginning of the applicable tiebreaker procedures. EXAMPLE: Say you get to Tiebreaker B (record vs common opponents), and Team 1 went 2-0 while Team 2 and Team 3 went 1-1. That would mean Team 1 is going to the Championship game, and for Teams 2 and 3, you then revert back to Tiebreaker A rather than proceeding on to Tiebreaker C. This is important because it means that a head-to-head result that was initially disregarded in a three-team tie is suddenly relevant to a two-team tie. Or it could also introduce a new common opponent that was excluded previously (because that opponent had not played Team 1).