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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/bwburke94 on 2023-11-20 01:48:37.
(This is not a serious post; it’s just a way to interpret the Big 12 tiebreaker rules in a weird way because they clearly don’t know what they’re doing.)
Let’s start with the following set of results to create a five-way tie for second place:
- Iowa State beats Kansas State
- Texas beats Texas Tech
- TCU beats Oklahoma
- BYU beats Oklahoma State
- West Virginia beats Baylor
Because none of ISU/KSU/OU/OSU/WVU have a loss to a common opponent, we advance to strength of conference schedule. Let’s add the last two games to maximize Iowa State’s SoS:
- Kansas beats Cincinnati
- Houston beats UCF
Now Iowa State’s opponents had a combined record of 41-40, which ties them atop the group with Kansas State and Oklahoma (dropping out OSU at 38-43 and WVU at 32-49). We restart the tie between just those three teams.
Head-to-head does not apply, because Oklahoma beat Iowa State but did not play Kansas State.
Now we go to the wording which has been debated to death: “record against the next highest placed common opponent”. If this can be twisted in such a way that the next highest placed common opponent is Oklahoma State (whom Iowa State beat and the other two lost to) instead of Kansas or Texas (whom Iowa State lost to and at least one of the other two beat), Iowa State would get the bid to the title game.
So here’s my reading of how it could work:
- Although Oklahoma beat Texas who is a common opponent, Texas is not the “next highest ranked” because they have a better record than the tied teams.
- The highest-ranked common opponent who is below the tie is Oklahoma State, despite the fact they have the same record as the tied teams, because they have already dropped out of this step of the tiebreaker.
- This is not contradicted by the conference’s claim that Texas has not clinched after the conclusion of yesterday’s games, because Texas not clinching is dependent on a team with the same record as the tied teams being counted as the “next highest ranked”.
Obviously this isn’t the way the Big 12 will actually interpret the tiebreaker (especially as it involves a team who is higher-ranked because they have a better record being treated differently from a team who is higher-ranked because they won a tiebreaker) but it’s a fun scenario in theory.
And I probably screwed up the math anyway, because I’m reliant on that mred site for some of this.