How does the SEC tiebreaker work? Chaotic week raising questions for Texas football

Think this past Saturday looked chaotic in the SEC? Just wait until the reshaped conference decides who participates in its inaugural championship game of the 16-team era.

For the first time since 1991, the SEC doesn’t have two divisions. That means the top two teams in the standings will meet for the SEC championship game Dec. 7 at Mercedes Benz Arena in Atlanta.

How crazy could the race for a berth in the title game get? Look at the results from Saturday, when Vanderbilt stunned No. 2 Alabama and Arkansas knocked off No. 4 Tennessee. Texas football players likely took notice, with many of them spending time on the couch recuperating from some bumps and bruises while watching football.

“Nothing really surprises me in college football,” Texas running back Jaydon Blue said during the Longhorns ’ weekly Monday media session inside Royal-Memorial Stadium. “But you know, some of the lessons I took (Saturday) is you really can't take no team in the country for granted. Especially in the SEC, everyone is good, and it could be anyone's day.”

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SEC tiebreakers: Just keep winning, says Steve Sarkisian

But who’s day will it be when the top two teams in the standings meet in the SEC title game? Any predictions for what will happen down South remain as clear as Mississippi mud, now that every team has played at least one game in the conference. And the league’s tiebreaking process can seem a bit muddled beyond the first head-to-head tiebreaker between two teams.

Let’s look at the rest of the six-layered tiebreaking process in the SEC:

• Record versus all common conference opponents among the tied teams;
• Record against highest (best) placed common conference opponent in the conference standings, and proceeding through the conference standings among the tied teams;
• Cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents among the tied teams;
• Capped relative total scoring margin versus all conference opponents among the tied teams;
• Random draw of the tied teams.

All those tiebreaking scenarios seem mind-boggling enough to confuse even the most clear-headed coach.

“I don’t know about y’all, but I stopped reading after the first few pages,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian cracked at a recent press conference.

All Sarkisian knows is that his No. 1 Longhorns (5-0, 1-0 SEC) need to keep winning in a schedule that seems to become increasingly tougher each week. Saturday’s game against Oklahoma in the Red River Rivalry needs no explanation. That will be followed by a visit from No. 4 Georgia Oct. 19 and an Oct. 26 trip to Vanderbilt, which will have presumably replaced the goalpost that fans tore down Saturday and marched down Nashville’s Broadway Street.

The rest of this year’s SEC schedule for Texas includes visits by Florida Nov. 9 and Kentucky Nov. 29 and road games at Arkansas Nov. 16 and Texas A&M Nov. 30.

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Texas A&M has early lead in SEC

Texas A&M already has a 3-0 record in SEC play, Texas and LSU are the only other teams without a conference defeat but have played just one game, and preseason favorites such as Georgia, Ole Miss, Alabama and Missouri already have one loss in SEC play.

Getting through an SEC schedule unscathed has never seemed more challenging, but a perfect conference run is the only way to ensure a spot in the SEC title tilt. And perfection takes relentless preparation, Sarkisian said Monday.

“I think what the SEC does, it taxes you in a way, from a mental intensity, that you have to prepare every week like it's a championship game every Saturday,” he said. “From top to bottom in this conference, anybody can beat anybody, and I think that we learned that this weekend. The value for me (this past weekend) was being able to reinforce a lot of the things we've been talking about as a team. And anytime you have living examples for young people especially, I think it's helpful that they can see and understand why our messaging is what it is.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: How does the SEC tiebreaker work? Chaotic week raising questions for Texas football