Beefed-up Big Ten announces football tiebreakers

The Big Ten on Monday announced its new tiebreakers for the league’s historic season, which will include 18 teams and match the top two in the overall conference standings against each other in the league championship game.

The Big Ten will no longer use divisions and has since added former Pac-12 teams USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon to the conference. If two teams are tied in the Big Ten standings (conference games only), the following steps will be taken until the participants are decided:

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.

The 2024 Discover Big Ten championship game will be held on Saturday, Dec. 7, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis and will be broadcast for the first time on CBS. The winner will earn a guaranteed spot in the College Football Playoff, which will feature the five highest-ranked conference champions and the next seven highest-ranked teams.

According to the Allstate Playoff Predictor, three Big Ten schools have at least a 1 in 3 chance to reach the playoff: Oregon (76%), Ohio State (68%) and Penn State (60%).