Oklahoma Football: SEC Announces Tiebreaker Procedures

With expansion to 16 members and an unbalanced schedule this year and next, the Southeastern Conference has taken a deliberate approach to deciding its football tiebreakers.

John E. Hoover | Aug 21, 2024

Chris Splitt and his wife Rhonda take a photo with an SEC sign outside Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman, Okla., during a celebration for OU joining the Southeastern Conference in Norman, Okla., Monday, July 1, 2024. / BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK

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Oklahoma Sooners

By SEC Media Relations

The Southeastern Conference on Wednesday announced new football tiebreaking procedures for the 2024 SEC Championship Game, the first football season since 1991 to be conducted without divisions.

In the event of a tie between teams competing for a place in the Conference championship game, the following procedures will be used in descending order until the tie is broken:

1. Head-to-head competition among the tied teams
2. Record versus all common Conference opponents among the tied teams
3. Record against highest (best) placed common Conference opponent in the Conference standings, and proceeding through the Conference standings among the tied teams
4. Cumulative Conference winning percentage of all Conference opponents among the tied teams
5. Capped relative total scoring margin versus all Conference opponents among the tied teams
6. Random draw of the tied teams

If the regular season standings determine a clear Conference champion and two or more teams are tied for second place, the Conference champion will be the home team in the Championship Game and the tiebreaking procedures will be used to determine its opponent.

If a tiebreaker step produces standings with two teams tied for first place in the Conference, both will qualify for the championship game. To decide the seeding of the two teams, both will progress through the two-team tiebreaker procedures until the tie is broken, which will determine home/away designation for the SEC Championship Game.

The 2024 SEC Championship Game will be held on Saturday, Dec. 7, at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, GA.

The SEC Championship Game has been the most watched conference championship nationally for 15 of the past 16 seasons, including 12 in a row from 2008-2019. The only year it was not No. 1 was 2020 when the SEC did not have a traditional schedule due to the pandemic. The 2023 SEC Championship Game averaged 17.519 million viewers, +61 percent vs. 2021, and peaked with 22.350 million viewers. It was the most-watched Conference Championship Game on any network in five years.

Complete tiebreaker procedures and examples can be found here.

Published Aug 21, 2024|Modified Aug 21, 2024

JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.