Division Tie Breakers
I know it is way too early and there is a lot of work left to be done, but...
BigTen Division Tie Breakers:
1. Conference record
2. Head-to-head record
3. Record within the division
4. BCS ranking
http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/23622/the-basic-big-ten-divisi…
Current Standings:
| * - Michigan State | 3-0 | 6-1 |
| * - Michigan | 2-1 | 6-1 |
| * - Nebraska | 2-1 | 6-1 |
| Iowa | 2-1 | 5-2 |
| Minnesota | 0-3 | 1-6 |
| Northwestern | 0-4 | 2-5 |
In order for Michigan to reach the conference championship game it looks like we's need MSU to lose twice in order to pass them as they have us head to head.
There can't be a 3 way tie of one loss teams -- as Michigan vs MSU is the only matchup yet to have happened in the top 4 of the division. It will be tough for us to win out and have MSU lose twice.
It is possible for Michigan to win a 3 way tie of 2 loss teams against MSU and either Iowa or Nebraska...assuming we beat the other one and MSU loses to them. What helps us there is that both MSU and Iowa have a loss out of conference lowering their BCS ranking, because at that point we'd have a better overall record.
October 26th, 2011 at 6:30 PM ^
Losing to Iowa would be much worse than losing to Illinois. (Or Purdue or OSU, for that matter, rivalry aside.)
Say that happened and we ended up tied with Iowa and MSU for 1st in the division, each of us with two losses.
Guess who the first team eliminated is? Michigan, because we went 0-2 against the other two teams (head-to-head is the first tie-breaker). Esentially whoever wins the MSU-Iowa game would be divison champ.
In fact, the only way we're going to win most of the two-loss tiebreakers is by making sure we sweep the rest of the division for a 4-1 record in division.