Big 12 Conference Offers Addendum to Clarify Murky Tiebreaker Rule
As expected, the Big 12 exercised common sense on Wednesday to help clarify its postseason tiebreaker procedures.
Actually, the league amended its rules — established in August for its new 14-team configuration — and added wording to figure out who would emerge from a complicated three-way tiebreaker.
Every Big 12 team still has two conference games to play, so there are countless possible permutations to settle the leaguer standings. But in this case, the projected teams are Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Kansas State. OSU beat both OU and K-State, while the Sooners and Wildcats did not play this season.
Big 12 tiebreaker rule
Big 12 Conference
“In the event of a multiple-team tie, head-to-head wins takes precedence. If all the tied teams are not common opponents, the tied team that defeated each of the other tied teams earns the Championship berth,” the addendum reads.
In the previous version, posted on the Big 12’s official website in August, says “Head-to-head (best cumulative win percentage in games among the tied teams). If not, every tied team has played each other, go to step 2.”
Big 12 tiebreaker, August 2023
Big12Sports.com
The poorly worded original version indicates that because OU and KSU did not play, OSU’s victory over them both is thrown out and the next tiebreaker would be invoked.
Now, with two games left in the season, that wording has been fixed.
“There have been no changes to any rules regarding Big 12 Football tiebreaker procedures, which were agreed upon prior to the season and went into effect August of 2023” the Big 12 statement reads.
Oklahoma (8-2 overall, 5-2 Big 12) finishes the regular season with a road game at BYU (5-5, 2-5) this Saturday, then closes the schedule on Friday, Nov. 24, with a home game against TCU.
First-place Texas (9-1, 6-1) visits Iowa State (6-4, 5-2) this week, while KState (7-3, 5-2) visits Kansas and Oklahoma State (7-3, 5-2) visits Houston.
