What Happened to the Divisions in Big Ten Football? Changes to Know for the 2024 Season
The Big Ten has done away with divisions for its 2024 season. So how does that work for the conference championship?
The Big Ten football conference is, well, bigger in the 2024 season. Despite it name suggesting just 10 teams, the power football conference has now expanded to 18 different schools, including newcomers like USC and Oregon. That means some restructuring needed to happen, and with that comes some big changes to the way the conference chooses its championship contenders.
So with Big Ten Saturday Night back on NBC and Peacock, let's take a closer look at the new rules for conference standings heading into 2024's season.
Does the Big Ten football conference have divisions in the 2024 season?
No, the Big Ten conference has done away with the division organizational method for its football teams.
Since 2011, the Big Ten's teams were divided into two divisions, and the leading teams in each division based on conference record were pitted against each other in the conference championship.
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Now, the conference has removed those dividers, and has declared that the Big Ten Championship Game this December will instead be played between whichever two teams have the best conference records at the end of the season. This system removes previous wrinkles like the problem of having the two best teams in the conference in the same division, and therefore sidelining one of those teams for the conference title game.
Who plays in the Big Ten Championship Game?
Without divisional winners to determine who will make the Big Ten title game, the teams with the two best conference records will now compete in the Big Ten Championship game.
Every college football season, a given team plays two kinds of games, conference and non-conference. The conference games, against opponents in the same conference, are very important, because they determine your overall standings in your conference at the end of the year. The better your record in conference games, the higher the chance you have of playing in a conference championship.
Now, because the Big Ten has cut out divisions for its 2024 season, that record matters more than ever before, because the two teams with the best conference record at the end of the year will be the ones playing for the championship game. And under the new College Football Playoff rules, the winner of the conference championship will almost certainly make it into the 12-team Playoff for a national title at the end of the year.
How Do Tiebreakers Work if Two Big Ten Teams Have the Same Record?
Under these new rules, which are based entirely on teams' conference records during the season, there's one key issue to look out for: What if two teams in contention for the title game have the same record? In August, the Big Ten released its new rules for how to deal with just such an occasion.
The Big Ten has developed a six-step system for comparing teams with the same record heading into a conference championship game, and it starts with comparing the teams themselves. If the two teams played each other during the regular season, the winner of that matchup gets to got to the championship game. If they didn't play each other during the regular season, they'll be compared based on the common opponents each team played, with the team that has the better record against shared opponents moving forward.
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If we still don't have a clear winner after those two steps, the conference will look at common conference opponents between the two teams, and judge based on which of those common opponents had the best record at the end of the season. Basically, if you both beat a team that's 5-4, but only one of you beat a team that's 6-3, the team that beat the 6-3 team has the advantage.
If that still doesn't solve the tie, the teams will be compared based on the "cumulative conference winning percentage" of all of their conference opponents, the theory being that a higher cumulative percentage means one team played a tougher schedule than the other. If the tie's still there, the conference will go to an outside party, and see which team has the highest ranking according to metrics from SportSource Analytics. And if that doesn't break the tie, we go to pure luck, and have a "random draw" held by the conference to determine which team advances to the championship game.
For more on the tiebreaker rules, head to the Big Ten's website.
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