(Written by kencraw)

One of my most popular posts over the years was my clear elaboration of the tie-breakers for who goes to the Rose Bowl in a year where there are Pac-10 co-champions (all tied for the lead would be champions, only 1 gets to go to the Rose Bowl). Here is my best shot at the same thing for the division tie-breakers:

*Note up front, it’s critical to notice the difference between the word conference, referring to all 12 teams in the conference, and division, the 6 teams in the appropriate half of the conference. For that reason, I’ve emphasized the word division as separate from conference.

1. For two teams tied for the lead, head-to-head matchup breaks the tie.
2. If for some inexplicable reason the two teams tied either don’t play each other or end the game in a tie (a really hard thing with overtime and all teams in the division scheduled to play each other), there is a set of rules I won’t go into, that includes DIVISION record, records against the other teams the DIVISION starting with 3rd place, record in common conference games, BCS ranking, total number of wins in the season and finally a coin toss.
3. For 3 or more teams (the remainder of the rules are for that): record against the tied teams breaks the tie. The most likely case is 3, where one team beat both the others. If it’s a triangle (A beat B, B beat C and C beat A), continue on. If there are 4 teams, if one beat all the rest, it’s easy, but if not, some will be 2-1 versus the other while others 1-2 and there could be a 0-3. The one with the best record wins the tie-breaker. At this point you eliminate the teams that aren’t tied for the best record amongst the 4, and re-run the tie-breakers (so head-to-head if there are two, etc.). Of course if it’s more than 4 teams, the same logic applies.
4. DIVISION record, i.e. only the games against the team in the division, whereas placing is determined by overall conference record.
5. Record against the rest of the teams in the DIVISION, one by one. So if 3 teams are tied, look at the team in 4th place and eliminate the ones that did lose to 4th place and re-run the tie-breakers. If that doesn’t break the tie (i.e. all the tied teams either beat or lost to the 4th place team) go to the 5th place team and repeat. If that doesn’t work, repeat with the 6th place team. Obviously if 4 are tied, you start with 5th place.
6. Record in common conference games. Frankly, this likely means looking at just a few in the other division, because we already looked at DIVISION record and to get here, the tied teams had the same record. Because of the missed teams in the other division, there will only be a few teams from the other division that played all the tied teams. By example for 2011 where UCLA, ASU and Utah are the candidates for the 3-way tie, the common opponents would be Cal, Oregon State and Washington State.
7. Eliminate all but the highest 2 BCS rankings of the multiple tied teams and re-run the 2-team tie-breakers.

See, it’s simple, right? 🙂