re: SEC Championship Game Tiebreaker

G. Flip a coin at the truck stop on I-20

LINK

Seattle, Dallas, Green Bay 2014 NFC tie breaker. Head to head goes out the window unless one team beats both of the other teams.

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E. Capped relative scoring margin versus all conference opponents among the tied teams. Formula will include a cap of 42 points scored on offense and 48 points allowed on defense.

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E. is crazy! If you win all of your games by 7 points, and lose one 48-47, but the other team wins all of theirs by 7 and loses one 60-42, this will be a "push." Also, any game that you win where your opponent scores more than 42 points actually produces a negative margin of victory.

Example: team A wins 42-41 against Team C on a last minute field goal in regulation. It gives them a +1 point differential. Team B gets tied by Team C 42-42 on a last minute field goal and then Team C kicks a field goal in the first OT because they start in fg range but Team B's defense steps up. Team B scores a TD to win 48-45. Team B gets a -3 point differential as if they had lost the game that they won by 3.

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E. is crazy! If you win all of your games by 7 points, and lose one 48-47, but the other team wins all of theirs by 7 and loses one 60-42, this will be a "push." Also, any game that you win where your opponent scores more than 42 points actually produces a negative margin of victory. Example: team A wins 42-41 against Team C on a last minute field goal in regulation. It gives them a +1 point differential. Team B gets tied by Team C 42-42 on a last minute field goal and then Team C kicks a field goal in the first OT because they start in fg range but Team B's defense steps up. Team B scores a TD to win 48-45. Team B gets a -3 point differential as if they had lost the game that they won by 3.

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That was just someone’s flawed interpretation of how the caps work. I think they probably took something that was a specific example and wrongly extrapolated the specifics to apply in all cases. The formula is actually far more complicated and convoluted than that, which isn’t necessarily a good thing, but it doesn’t produce the kinds of distortions you are pointing out here. It’s more like if the average margin of victory is 10 points, the most you get credit for in any one game is 20. That’s still too simplified but it’s the basic concept.

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Yup. Also, as many have pointed out, a 10-3 loser of SEC Championship might get left out of playoff in favor of another 10-2 SEC team.

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Zero chance this happens.... ZERO.

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I can also see a couple teams turning down an SEC championship appearance to avoid another loss and possibly missing the playoff

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That’s not an option.

I think it's too early to tell what the committee will do. Let's say that the top 4 teams in the SEC are Texas, LSU, Georgia, and Tennessee. LSU goes into the championship game 7-1 with a loss to Alabama, and loses to Texas. I could see the committee saying LSU was 0-1 against the top 4 teams, and if Bama is #5, 0-2 against the top 5 in the conference and lost OOC to a 3+ loss team, so they get left out.

I expect in most years the #12 seed will be a conference champ ranked lower than 12th. The 5 seed might be the best spot. Home game against the lowest ranked conference champ followed by the 4 seed.

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That’s not what it’s about. There are only about 20 programs that generate the majority of the revenue in the sport.

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No that’s not what it’s about. It’s about large broadcasting networks fighting over regional market shares. The long term sustainability of the sport will always take a backseat to short term profits for these mega corporations.

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No that’s not what it’s about. It’s about large broadcasting networks fighting over regional market shares. The long term sustainability of the sport will always take a backseat to short term profits for these mega corporations.

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As with any economic condition, there are supply and demand components. Conferences wouldn’t be consolidating to increase revenue if there were no revenue to be had. While consolidation does enhance revenue by creating more premier matchups, those matchups could have been created through scheduling agreements between the conferences. The problem with that is that the SEC and Big 10 would have had to share more of the revenue with other conferences and the teams that moved to the SEC and Big 10 would have had to share with the rest of the Big 12 and PAC-12. The networks would have been more than happy to get the same content from 64 teams spread across 5 conferences vs having it more concentrated in 2 conferences with 34 teams. The consolidation was entirely about 16-18 of the top 20 revenue generating programs only having to share with 34 teams instead spread out amongst 64 teams.