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2024 SEC Championship Game: Chaos scenarios and tiebreakers await in college football

Umito November 16, 2024

There are three Saturdays left in the college football regular season, which means the SEC championship game is less than a month away — the first in more than 30 years to be determined without a division.

As part of conference realignment this season, the SEC eliminated the East and West divisions that had divided the conference since the early 1990s. The winner of the East division has since faced the winner of the West division in the championship. conference.

With no divisions and new teams in the conference, the risk of chaos is higher than ever, meaning there are plenty of potential tiebreaker scenarios that would determine which teams make the SEC Championship Game. And remember, the winner of this game will automatically earn a spot in the College Football Playoff.

Read on to learn more about the SEC title and tiebreaker scenarios.

When is the SEC Championship Game?

The SEC Championship Game will take place on Saturday, December 7, 2024. It will take place at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta at 4 p.m. Eastern Time.

Who will play in the SEC Championship Game?

With no splits, the top two teams in the SEC standings will advance to the conference title game. Conference standings are determined solely by conference results. Complete season records are irrelevant. So a team with multiple non-conference losses could still be at the top of the standings within the conference.

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Who are the favorites to advance to the SEC Championship Game?

Start of week 12, there are three teams in the SEC with only one conference loss; every other team has at least two. Texas, Tennessee and Texas A&M are tied for the top spot in the SEC standings with three games remaining.

Texas and Texas A&M will face off in the final week of the regular season – if they still have just one conference loss at that point, the winner of the game will advance to the title game . (There’s even a scenario where they could both make it to the title match, regardless of who wins.)

Tennessee’s remaining opponents are Georgia, UTEP and Vanderbilt – if the Volunteers win, they will advance to the SEC title game.

That’s the biggest “if” in the SEC right now, as Tennessee has to travel to Athens to play the Dawgs on the road at night and, depending on which book you use, Georgia is about a 10-point favorite .

If the Volunteers lose to Georgia this week, they will join the five other SEC teams with two conference losses, setting off a possibly chaotic chain of events to determine the conference’s top teams at season’s end.

What are the SEC’s tiebreaker procedures?

In the event that two of the three one-loss teams don’t win (Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M), the SEC will almost certainly have to use tiebreakers to determine which teams travel to Atlanta.

The SEC states: “In the event of a tie between teams competing for a spot in the Conference Championship Game, the following procedures will be used in descending order until the tie is broken:

A. Head-to-head competition between tied teams
B. Record against all common Conference opponents among tied teams
C. Record against the highest placed (best) common Conference opponent in the Conference standings, and progression in the Conference standings among tied teams
D. Cumulative Conference winning percentage of all Conference opponents among tied teams
E. Relative total score margin capped against all Conference opponents among tied teams
F. Draw for tied teams »

This is simple enough, but the real complication arises when applying these procedures to a tie involving three or more teams.

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What are the possible scenarios for the SEC Championship?

The simplest

The simplest scenario is the one outlined above: Tennessee wins and Texas or Texas A&M does the same. In this case, the winner of Texas-Texas A&M at the end of the season would face Tennessee in Atlanta.

The craziest

But if Tennessee loses to Georgia this weekend, or one of the other teams suffers an unexpected setback, there could be as many as eight teams with 2 conference losses, all tied for the conference lead. Consider that Tennessee could suffer its second loss to Georgia; Texas could suffer its second loss in an upset against Arkansas; and Texas A&M could suffer a second loss against Texas. How do you apply tiebreaking procedures to eight teams?

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In this scenario, which would include Texas, Texas A&M, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss, LSU and Mizzou, the likely deciding tiebreaker is fourth on the list — cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents (in simple terms: strength of schedule). The eight teams do not all face each other head-to-head and do not all have a common opponent.

In the by-schedule tiebreaker, be wary of teams that played winless Mississippi State, as your opponents’ winning percentage will drop quickly. And that would lead to a conference championship between Alabama and LSU, the only teams in the hypothetical 8-way tie without Mississippi State on their schedule.

The probable

If you subscribe to the wisdom of the oddsmakers, then you expect Tennessee to lose to Georgia and Mizzou to lose to South Carolina this weekend, and you expect everything else to remain the status quo until the end of the regular season.

The scenario this likely leads to is one of only one losing team atop the SEC standings: Texas’ winner at Texas A&M on November 30. So the winner of this game would punch their ticket to the title game, and there would be six other teams (losers of this game plus Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Ole Miss, LSU) with two conference losses, all at tie for second place.

Again, not all of these teams play each other (regardless of which Texas school is in the storyline), and they don’t all have a common opponent. So in a comparison of conference opponents’ winning percentages, the teams are again faced with the Mississippi State problem. Georgia would be eliminated almost immediately by this tiebreaker, facing not only Mississippi State, but also one-win teams Kentucky and Auburn. Ole Miss and Tennessee suffer the same fate, each playing against Oklahoma, Kentucky and Mississippi State. So that leaves us to compare a Texas team with LSU and Alabama.

Once we’ve eliminated Georgia, Ole Miss, and Tennessee, here are the remaining scenarios, assuming there are no major upsets (but there is a back-to-back one we’ll consider here – the Arkansas vs. Missouri in the final week of the season):

Texas beats Texas A&M, Arkansas beats Mizzou: Texas and Texas A&M advance to SEC championship game
Texas beats Texas A&M, Mizzou beats Arkansas: Texas, Alabama advance to SEC Championship Game
Texas A&M beats Texas, Arkansas beats Mizzou: Texas A&M and LSU advance to SEC championship game
Texas A&M beats Texas, Mizzou beats Arkansas: Texas A&M and Alabama advance to SEC championship game

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When will we know who will play in the SEC Championship Game?

Barring any super surprising upsets outside of what’s been shown here, we won’t know who will be in the SEC title game until the final SEC game is played on November 30.