re: SEC Championship scenarios are a mess

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Scenario #2: Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M, LSU all tied at 7-1

D) Texas A&M has best winning percentage, restart with LSU and Texas

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this is a scenario that gets interesting, because now it matters who wins a game that could conceivably go either way.

Auburn / Vanderbilt (not real shocking either way)

assuming no other real upsets anywhere else

if Auburn wins:
Texas A&M has the best conference opponent win %
Texas (5-0) has the better record vs common opponents with LSU (4-1)
A&M vs Texas in Atlanta

if Vanderbilt wins:
LSU and Texas A&M will have the exact same conference opponent win %, which is better than Texas. So Texas is 3rd.
Revert to H2H for LSU A&M to see who is home team.
A&M vs LSU in Atlanta.


HOWEVER:
If Auburn beats Vandy then Vandy beats So.Carolina (again, not a crazy scenario)

LSU now has the better conference win % and is the home team.
so it goes to head 2 head between A&M and Texas

LSU vs Texas in Atlanta

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that is correct.
but with 3 teams tied with 1 loss each, either they didn't play a round robin, or they all went 1-1 (no other mathematical possibility.
If they all have more than 1 loss, then the possibility is back on the table.

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That’s true for a 3-way tie among 1-loss teams. You can’t have a round robin unless everyone is 1-1. But a team can still win the head-to-head tiebreaker without a round robin.

Example:
Let’s say Texas had won against UGA.
They go into the A&M game at 7-0.
A&M loses another game on the schedule (say @USCe).
A&M beats Texas.

So now you have Texas, Texas A&M, and LSU tied at 7-1.

Because Texas A&M has head-to-head over both other teams, they win that tiebreaker even though Texas and LSU didn’t play.

The opposite would apply if any of the tied teams had lost to all other tied teams - that team would be eliminated and the tiebreaker would reset. But that’s not possible with 3+ 1-loss teams obviously.

As I said before I don’t think there’s a scenario where head-to-head would apply among 3+ 1-loss teams this year based on the teams that already have a loss.

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Scenario #2: Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M, LSU all tied at 7-1

. . .

- We restart with Texas A&M, LSU, and Texas


A) Head-to-head competition among the tied teams
- There is not a complete round robin among these teams
- Texas did not play LSU
- No team either beat all the other tied teams or lost to all the other tied teams, advance to Record versus common Conference opponents

B) All tied here
C) All tied here
D) Texas A&M has best winning percentage, restart with LSU and Texas

A) Did not play
B) Texas beats out LSU because of common conference opponent record

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This is where it becomes much less predictable. I was looking at scenarios for this 4-way tie the other day. LSU and A&M have (or are projected to have) very similar opponent records. I found that if every other game is chalk, but Ole Miss beats UGA, LSU and aTm actually tie for opponent win% and Texas gets eliminated.

That becomes interesting because UGA and aTm don’t play this year. Which means simply adding a win for one of LSU’s opponents was enough to move the needle. By extension, this means that one of aTm’s opponents losing a game is also enough to move the needle.

Examples:
- Mizzou loses to Oklahoma or Arkansas
- Auburn loses to Vandy
- Vandy beats South Carolina

I’m sure there are others, but any of these upsets would make our opponent win% equal to or greater than Texas A&M’s.

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Examples:
- Mizzou loses to Arkansas
- Auburn loses to Vandy
- Vandy beats South Carolina

I’m sure there are others, but any of these upsets would make our opponent win% equal to or greater than Texas A&M’s.

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and none of these would be very big "upsets" either

but this is college football, so you know there's going to be at least one big one somewhere along the way that none of us are thinking is possible (may not even be in the SEC).

That's my fault. Sorry.

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Yeah, I very briefly considered trying to build something up to calculate tiebreaker probabilities based on some sort of predictive metric like SP+ or FPI. Then I realized there are something like 134 million potential win/loss combinations for the remaining 27 SEC games.

I quickly said “nah, frick all that.”

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yeah, I'm not doing 134 million possibilities.

but I am a fan of absolute chaos, so I created some.
and I have a new favorite scenario I'm rooting for


Editing original post to add more chaos

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and I have a new favorite scenario I'm rooting for

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if this happens:



only 2 "upsets".
Ole Miss over Georgia
Vandy over LSU (doesn't that sound like an LSU thing to do ; Lose to Vandy after beating Bama?)


You're left with:

Texas A&M in the SEC CG at 8-0

then: LSU, Georgia, Missouri, Texas, Ole Miss, and Tennessee all tied at 6-2

LSU would have the highest Conf. Opponent wring % and play against A&M in Atlanta.

LSU wins the SEC CG.

3 loss LSU would get the Automatic bid into the Playoffs

and you would have SIX teams from the SEC with 2 total losses each jockeying for playoff spots.

Good Luck CFP Committee

To break ties simply take the two best teams. Highest ranked.

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To break ties simply take the two best teams. Highest ranked.

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oh yeah, because the rankings have always been so unbiased.