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A More Equitable Tiebreaker?

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Sonof'47alum's picture
December 3, 2015 at 12:29pm
53 Comments

In future years, would it make sense to do away with the head-to-head conference tiebreaker and use a different system?

Yes, Michigan State beat Ohio State this year but, on the other hand, lost to a team with a sub .500 record.  Why should that be a less significant loss than Ohio State's?  The bottom line is, they each lost one game and Ohio State's loss was to a top-ranked team.

I felt the same way last year about Baylor and TCU.  And, yes, Baylor beat TCU; but it lost to West Virginia, which finished one game above .500.

The Premier League in England resolves ties on the basis of goal differential and, quite frankly, I think that is a more equitable way of determining a champion.

So, in the case of the Big Ten, the comparable stat would be points differential, i.e., the difference between points for and points against.

Naturally, I understand this could be deemed an incentive for teams to run up the score in blowout victories.  But that potential abuse could be eliminated by capping the margin of victory at perhaps 28 points in a specific game in calculating the point differential total for the purposes of a tiebreaker.

I accept Ohio State's fate in the current system; I just think there should be reconsideration of how this is done in the future.

 

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