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).…
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NCAA: Herron’s Day Didn’t Happen
Buried in the aftermath of the UTL epic finish, before the game it was announced that the stats from the opener against Western Michigan would not be recognized by the NCAA. They would recognize the final score, the records and the attendance. Furthermore, as described by Ryan Artullo from the Toledo Blade, the Big Ten does recognize the stats: Both Michigan and Western Michigan, along with their respective conferences, were given permission by the NCAA to honor the statistics. That means, for example, the Big Ten will observe linebacker Brandon Herron’s two touchdowns, but the NCAA won’t. It remains to be seen if the NCAA’s decisions will have an impact on postseason national awards. Voting is done by media members, some of whom may choose to ignore the NCAA’s ruling and view the statistics recognized by UM and WMU. I hate this but it’s done. I mean, consider that they keep all the stats from games like the 3 OT Illinois game from last season. BCS Computers? Something that crossed my mind on Sunday and I preface with a big disclaimer: Michigan isn’t anywhere close to a BCS team. That said, given that the BCS computers use that NCAA stats to varying degrees in their rankings, I wondered how this would affect the computer calculations. So I pinged a few…
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BCS Bracketology (We Still Lose)
Darren “My Main Man” Everson dropped another interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal this weekend. He took the top 64 college football teams ranked via the BCS formula (I’m assuming you can get the data extended out to 64 teams?) and dropped them into an NCAA tournament field. (BCS #1 Auburn was dropped in the slot held by NCAA top seed Ohio State, and so on). Then they played out the tournament seed by seed as it’s gone thus far. Check it out: Even in hypothetical exercises crossing sports we can’t win. Rich Rod’s 2010 team collides in an improbable match-up with, umm, Mississippi State. We lost again. Everson’s a Michigan grad so I’m guessing he chuckled at this one:
