Insane tiebreak scenarios, part one.

Let’s say that Oregon loses its upcoming trip to Arizona and Arizona loses its trip to USC, and USC, Oregon, and Arizona win all other games. This isn’t a particularly surprising outcome, given that these are the best three teams in the Pac-10 and and that the home team is dominating big games so far this year.

Arizona, USC, and Oregon will all top the standings with 2 wins. Off to the tiebreak rules!

If I’m reading them right (and I should be, considering I’m taking a class at USC right now called “Advanced Football Tiebreak Scenarios”), it appears that you first consider the teams’ record against each other. Since each team is 1-1 against the other 2 teams, we go on to the next tiebreak:

If more than two teams are still tied after the process above is completed, each remaining tied team's record against the team occupying the highest position in the final regular season standings shall be compared, with the procedure continuing down through the standings until one team gains an advantage.

Since these three teams are at the top of the standings, we have to go down throughout the rest of the standings. To simplify the process, we can simply look at the losses of the top three teams - each of them has lost to each other, but they all have one other loss. Arizona and USC have lost to Washington (interestingly, both on the road, and both by three points). But Oregon lost to Stanford. Stanford, currently at 5-2, will almost certainly have a better record at the end of the year than Washington, currently at 2-4.

Since Oregon has a worse record against better teams, it is eliminated, and we have a two-way tie between USC and Arizona. At that point, USC holds the tiebreaking win and goes to the Rose Bowl.

Whew! Glad that’s over.

But wait! What if Stanford loses its next two games, USC and Cal, to slip to 5-4? And what if Washington wins its last three - Oregon State, Cal, and Washington State? At this point, there is no available conference tiebreak, so the team with the highest ranking in the final BCS standings will go to the Rose Bowl. In this scenario, that team would presumably be USC because both Arizona and Oregon have three losses (Arizona lost to Iowa and Oregon lost to Boise State). And then USC would go to the Rose Bowl.

Now you’re ready to ace the final for “Advanced Football Tiebreak Scenarios.”