How the SEC title game participants could come down to a random draw

SEC football tiebreakers released; How title game could come down to a random draw

The SEC has released their official tiebreaker procedure for the 2024 football season. Now that the conference is up to 16 teams, they've had to amend the process—given that they're not only expanding, but doing away with divisions.

Of course, if you're like me and want to know what happens in the most chaotic situation possible, you look right at the bottom of the list. Sitting there, at initial 'F', we see it: "Random draw of the tied teams."

Okay, great. How do we make this happen?

Let's brainstorm. Tiebreaker A is head-to-head competition, so we need two teams who don't play each other—let's say Texas A&M and Alabama. Then, it goes to record versus common opponents—in this case, the Aggies and Tide share South Carolina, Missouri, LSU, and Auburn in common. Let's call that 4-0 on both sides.

C is where things begin to get a little complicated. The official release states that it is the "record against highest (best) placed common conference opponent in the conference standings, and proceeding through the conference standings among the tied teams." For simplicity's sake here, let's say both A&M and Alabama are 11-1 with losses to non-conference opponents—Notre Dame and Wisconsin, respectively (I know, I know, but this is for fun).

D is cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents among the tied teams. This is where things get tough: Alabama's opponents that A&M doesn't have are Tennessee, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Vanderbilt. Perhaps a lowering tide can sink all boats with the Commodores there, because the Aggies face Florida, Mississippi State, Texas, and Arkansas. Not exactly the class of the conference.

Let's say UF and MSU overachieve, while Tennessee, UGA, and OU slightly disappoint, such that the conference winning percentage of both A&M and Alabama's opponents matches at... let's say somewhere between .500 and .625. Now, to E.

This is the most intriguing one. "Capped relative total scoring margin versus all conference opponents among the tied teams." What does "capped" mean? Non-garbage time? This is really unclear. But I guess it means teams should think about running up the score.

Finally, we have reached the random draw. Maximum chaos. Just what we set out for. There is absolutely no chance this happens... but it's fun to imagine.

But wait, you say, doesn't this just mean that both of these teams reach the conference championship game? It would, except that what I haven't told you is that Ole Miss has gone undefeated and this is for the right to face the Rebels! This is a card I was holding the whole time and not something I just thought of as I began to write this paragraph.