• Fun with Big Ten Tie-Breakers

    The latest Big Ten weekly press release detailed out the tie-breaker scenarios in detail and Adam Rittenberg of ESPN summarized the basics earlier this month.    For the B1G  title game, the winner of each division will play, unless one of the division winners is ineligible to play in a bowl game. To me, the official Big Ten division tie-breaker rules aren’t crystal clear after a quick read.  I think the confusion is that technically Big Ten conference teams have three types of records: The division record (5 games) The overall conference record (8 games) The overall record (12 games) Here are the key elements on the conference championship rules from the official site, with some comments to clarify what it means.  Hat tip to Big Ten media relations lead Scott Chipman for confirming this: 1). Divisional Champion rule:  The Big Ten football championship will be decided by a game played between the two division champions.    Clarification:  The division champion is the team with the best overall conference record (in the 8 overall conference games played). 2). First Tie-Breaker:  If two teams are tied, the winner of the game between the two tied teams shall be the representative.   Clarification:  So that’s easy if you are clear on how two teams can tie, and that’s based on overall conference record as discussed in 1).…