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What happens if there is a three way tie in the west?

T

TRU

All-SEC
Oct 3, 2000
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There is clearly a lot of football to play in the season. But I could easily see the following scenario playing out:

1. Alabama wins out
2. Ole Miss goes undefeated into the Egg Bowl and State wins.

This leaves Alabama, Miss State and Ole Miss in a three way tie, each with 1 loss records, with all of the losses against each other. The records against all SEC opponents, both in and outside the West are the same. As far as I can tell this may go as deep as the 7th or 8th tiebreaker in the SEC rulebook, which is some arcane rule about relative strength of interdivisional SEC opponents.

Anyone have any insight into how Alabama would fare in this situation?
 
You are right. It would fall to the records of each team's East division opponents. As luck would have it, Ole Miss plays Tennessee and Vanderbilt from the East, neither of whom have won a conference game yet. Mississippi State plays Kentucky and Vanderbilt, and of course we have Florida and Tennessee.

Essentially, we should pull against Tennessee and Vanderbilt. Once the 3-way tie is broken, we want to be left tied with Mississippi State, since we will have beaten them and thus win the 2-way tie that is left.
 
TideEngineer08 said:
You are right. It would fall to the records of each team's East division opponents. As luck would have it, Ole Miss plays Tennessee and Vanderbilt from the East, neither of whom have won a conference game yet. Mississippi State plays Kentucky and Vanderbilt, and of course we have Florida and Tennessee.

Essentially, we should pull against Tennessee and Vanderbilt. Once the 3-way tie is broken, we want to be left tied with Mississippi State, since we will have beaten them and thus win the 2-way tie that is left.
Click to expand...
Well, if we must.
 
TideEngineer08 said:
You are right. It would fall to the records of each team's East division opponents. As luck would have it, Ole Miss plays Tennessee and Vanderbilt from the East, neither of whom have won a conference game yet. Mississippi State plays Kentucky and Vanderbilt, and of course we have Florida and Tennessee.

Essentially, we should pull against Tennessee and Vanderbilt. Once the 3-way tie is broken, we want to be left tied with Mississippi State, since we will have beaten them and thus win the 2-way tie that is left.
Click to expand...

We don't need to pull against UT to help with the tie-breaker. Maybe there are hundreds of other reasons to pull against UT, but this is just for clarification. Since Ole Miss and Bama both played UT, that cancels out. We would simply need Florida to have a better SEC record than Vandy.
 
This will not matter, LSU will beat Ole Miss. It's time for bad Bo to make an appearance.
 
TideEngineer08 said:
You are right. It would fall to the records of each team's East division opponents. As luck would have it, Ole Miss plays Tennessee and Vanderbilt from the East, neither of whom have won a conference game yet. Mississippi State plays Kentucky and Vanderbilt, and of course we have Florida and Tennessee.

Essentially, we should pull against Tennessee and Vanderbilt. Once the 3-way tie is broken, we want to be left tied with Mississippi State, since we will have beaten them and thus win the 2-way tie that is left.
Click to expand...

HTH with MSU would not come into play in this scenario unless the combined SEC records of both Bama's and MSU's cross divisional opponents were identical. IOW, the ut-Vandy game may very well determine the West representative in the SECCG. :rolleyes:

G. Best cumulative Conference winning percentage of non-divisional opponents (Note: If two teams' non-divisional opponents have the same cumulative record, then the two-team tiebreaker procedures apply. If four teams are tied, and three teams' non-divisional opponents have the same cumulative record, the three-team tiebreaker procedures will be used beginning with 2.A.);
 
Tie-breaker Rule "G." does not attempt to eliminate a team, or teams, to get it down to a two team tie-breaker. Rule "G" ends it once and for all by taking the team whose cross divisional opponents have the best Combined SEC record.

Example (Western 1 would be the representative)
[TABLE="class: table table-striped data-table, width: 100%"]
[TR]
[TH="class: col-xs-3 text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]TIED TEAMS[/TH]
[TH="class: col-xs-9 text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]NON-DIVISIONAL OPPONENTS CUMULATIVE RECORD[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: col-xs-3 text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]Western 1[/TD]
[TD="class: col-xs-9 text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]Eastern Opponents: 14-2[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: col-xs-3 text-center, align: center"]Western 2[/TD]
[TD="class: col-xs-9 text-center, align: center"]Eastern Opponents: 12-4[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: col-xs-3 text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]Western 3[/TD]
[TD="class: col-xs-9 text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]Eastern Opponents: 8-8[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]




 
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ALA2262 said:
Tie-breaker Rule "G." does not attempt to eliminate a team, or teams, to get it down to a two team tie-breaker. Rule "G" ends it once and for all by taking the team whose cross divisional opponents have the best Combined SEC record.

Example (Western 1 would be the representative)
[TABLE="class: table table-striped data-table, width: 100%"]
[TR]
[TH="class: col-xs-3 text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]TIED TEAMS[/TH]
[TH="class: col-xs-9 text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]NON-DIVISIONAL OPPONENTS CUMULATIVE RECORD[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: col-xs-3 text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]Western 1[/TD]
[TD="class: col-xs-9 text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]Eastern Opponents: 14-2[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: col-xs-3 text-center, align: center"]Western 2[/TD]
[TD="class: col-xs-9 text-center, align: center"]Eastern Opponents: 12-4[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: col-xs-3 text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]Western 3[/TD]
[TD="class: col-xs-9 text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]Eastern Opponents: 8-8[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
Click to expand...


This is not correct. G gets it down to two teams. Look at one of the first rules for a tie breaker.
 
BamaSully said:
We don't need to pull against UT to help with the tie-breaker. Maybe there are hundreds of other reasons to pull against UT, but this is just for clarification. Since Ole Miss and Bama both played UT, that cancels out. We would simply need Florida to have a better SEC record than Vandy.
Click to expand...


Yes we do. Because MSU's cross
divisional record must be better than Ole Miss. Not just ours better. If MSU is worse than OL miss they drop out and its head to head with us and Miss. And we lose that.
 
Skeeterpop said:
This is not correct. G gets it down to two teams. Look at one of the first rules for a tie breaker.
Click to expand...

The ONLY way that THEIR example would come down to a two team tie-breaker would be if the cross-divisional records were identical. Read the note in the rule! Key word in the note is "then".
 
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CrimsonForce said:
If Bama and OM both have one loss wouldn't they go ahead of us because of head-to-head?
Click to expand...

Not in a 3 way tie with MSU where each is 1-1 in the round robin (OP's scenario). That takes it to Tie-breaker Rule "G" which makes the division representative THE ONE whose Cross divisional opponent's SEC record is the best. They start at the top and work down. They DO NOT start at the bottom and work up. The ONLY WAY it would EVER come down to HTH would be if the cross divisional Conference records of the top two teams were the same.
 
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Perhaps applying the example provided by the SEC themselves will help those who do not understand Rule "G" The example clearly states that "Western 1 would be the representative".

For this discussion we will call Western 1- Bama, Western 2- Ole Miss, and Western 3- MSU. The point I have been trying to make is that they do not start at the bottom eliminating MSU and reducing it to a two way tie. They start at the top and name Western 1 the representative. There is no two way tie in the example because none of the cross divisional records are the same.

G. Best cumulative Conference winning percentage of non-divisional opponents (Note: If two teams' non-divisional opponents have the same cumulative record, then the two-team tiebreaker procedures apply. If four teams are tied, and three teams' non-divisional opponents have the same cumulative record, the three-team tiebreaker procedures will be used beginning with 2.A.);

Example (Western 1 would be the representative)
[TABLE="class: cms_table_table cms_table_table-striped cms_table_data-table, width: 100%"]
[TR]
[TH="class: cms_table_col-xs-3 cms_table_text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]TIED TEAMS[/TH]
[TH="class: cms_table_col-xs-9 cms_table_text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]NON-DIVISIONAL OPPONENTS CUMULATIVE RECORD[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: cms_table_col-xs-3 cms_table_text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]Western 1[/TD]
[TD="class: cms_table_col-xs-9 cms_table_text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]Eastern Opponents: 14-2[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: cms_table_col-xs-3 cms_table_text-center, align: center"]Western 2[/TD]
[TD="class: cms_table_col-xs-9 cms_table_text-center, align: center"]Eastern Opponents: 12-4[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: cms_table_col-xs-3 cms_table_text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]Western 3[/TD]
[TD="class: cms_table_col-xs-9 cms_table_text-center, bgcolor: #F9F9F9, align: center"]Eastern Opponents: 8-8[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]


http://www.secsports.com/article/11145479
 
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OK, so I looked at the schedules of UK,UF, Vandy, and UT then I projected what I thought would be each school's final won loss record. Interestingly Bama's opponents would be 9-15, Ole Miss 9-16, and MSU 9-16.

Does this mean Bama wins or loses out because the Gators didn't play the game with Idaho?
 
Go Bama said:
OK, so I looked at the schedules of UK,UF, Vandy, and UT then I projected what I thought would be each school's final won loss record. Interestingly Bama's opponents would be 9-15, Ole Miss 9-16, and MSU 9-16.

Does this mean Bama wins or loses out because the Gators didn't play the game with Idaho?
Click to expand...

Read the rule again. It is the Conference (third word in the rule) record of the cross divisional opponents. NOT the overall record.

Note that the records in the example total 16. NOT 24. Don't know how you got 25.
 
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Rule reading tip:

Read each and every word in any rule very carefully. Because each and every word is placed in a rule very carefully so as to validate the intent of the rule.
 
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