The Big 12 announced Friday the tiebreaker procedures that will determine participants in the 2024 Big 12 championship game.
The tiebreakers are similar to those announced in recent weeks by the SEC and Big Ten, leagues that also moved to a divisionless format after the latest round of conference expansion. The Big 12 became a 16-team conference this offseason with the departures of Oklahoma and Texas and the additions of former Pac-12 schools Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.
If two teams are tied for second place, the league will apply the following criteria in the order given:
- Direct comparison of teams with the same result.
- Record against all common conference opponents.
- Record against the next best placed conference opponent in the table and further descending in the order of placement.
- Combined conference winning percentage of conference opponents (essentially the conference strength of a team in that schedule).
- Total wins in a 12-game season (only one win against an FCS or lower division team counts).
- Highest ranking by SportsSource Analytics based on the team’s Rating Score metric after the end of the regular season.
- Coin toss.
If there is a tie between three or more teams, the Big 12 will use the winning percentage in games between the tied teams as a tiebreaker and then apply the same criteria as the two-team tiebreaker to all tied teams involved. If the tie between multiple teams is reduced to two teams, the two-team tiebreakers will be applied.
The Big 12 posted the full, two-page tiebreaker document on its website on Friday.
The league also reiterated Friday that Saturday’s game between Baylor and Utah will not count as a conference game because it was originally scheduled as a nonconference game before the Utes joined the league. The teams played as nonconference opponents last year when Utah defeated Baylor 20-13 in Waco, Texas.
Baylor travels to Salt Lake City for the return match on Saturday.
Arizona and Kansas State will face a similar situation on Sept. 13. The two teams had a two-game series scheduled for 2024 and 2025 when they were in different conferences, and that game will remain a non-conference contest this season, even though both are now in the Big 12.
This is only the second season since 2011 that the Big 12 does not have a true round-robin football schedule.
From 2011 to 2022, the league had 10 teams and played nine conference games, allowing all teams in the league to compete against each other annually. That changed in 2023 when BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF joined and the league now has 14 teams. The Big 12 will continue to play nine conference games in the league’s 16-team era.
The 2024 Big 12 Championship Game will be held on December 7 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
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