If Penn State ends up in a tie to make the Big Ten conference title game, how will it be broken?
Penn State football is one of the many Big Ten teams that is happy that the conference no longer has divisions. The days of playing the league’s top teams year after year are not over, but they are significantly reduced. And, a team with a lesser record from the West than the second-place finisher in the East is no longer awarded a spot in the conference title game. By and large, it’s a good thing for the Nittany Lions. However, the end of divisions creates a new potential roadblock to the Big Ten title game: A revised tiebreaker procedure.
If teams are tied atop the conference’s standings for first and/or second place at the end of the regular season, the conference will break the tie(s) as follows, going as far as needed in order of the new protocol announced on Monday:
First: The tied teams will be compared based on head-to-head matchups during the regular season.
Second: The tied teams will be compared based on record against all common conference opponents.
Third: 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.
Fourth: The tied teams will be compared based on the best cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents.
Fifth: The representative will be chosen based on the highest ranking by SportSource Analytics (team Rating Score metric) following the regular season.
Sixth: The representative will be chosen by random draw among the tied teams conducted by the Commissioner or designee.
As noted, the Big Ten says that if there is a clear first place finisher but a tie for second, the same procedure will be used to determine who the top team plays.
Penn State postseason projections
FanDuel calls head coach James Franklin’s team one of the six most likely programs to make the College Football Playoff at odds of -145. However, it has longer odds to make the first Big Ten title game in an 18-team conference. It has the Nittany Lions at +490 to return to Indianapolis for the first time since 2016. By comparison, Ohio State is at +150 and Oregon +210. The Buckeyes play the Nittany Lions and Ducks, while PSU only sees OSU, of course. It’s one of many potential ways for the tiebreaker procedure to come into play.
All of that will play itself out, of course. And, it might be advantageous to miss the conference title game. After all, if you play in it and lose it, you do not get a bye and thus add an extra game of wear and tear to your resume with a shortened turnaround before a first-round Playoff game.
Before any of that matters, though, Penn State must take care of business at West Virginia on Aug. 31 to kick off the season.
“I have probably more respect for West Virginia than anybody just because I’ve played there so many times. I know what Mountaineer Football means to the state of West Virginia. And, I know what the environment is going to be like,” Franklin said in early August. “Played there a ton of times.
“So I think it’s going to be a great game. I think it’s going to be a great environment. And then, on top of that, the way they ended their season. They ended up winning nine games. And, the quarterback ended up playing really well and finished the season on a real high note. So they got a ton of confidence coming into this year because of that.”
