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Chris Low, senior editor at ESPN
The SEC has announced its tiebreakers for the 2024 football season, adding Oklahoma and Texas and eliminating divisions in the newly expanded 16-team league.
In the event of a tie between the teams competing for a spot in the SEC Championship Game, the following procedures will be applied in descending order until the tie is broken:
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A. Direct comparison between the teams with the same number of points.
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B. Record of the teams with the same number of points against all common conference opponents.
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C. Record against the highest ranked (best) common opponent in the conference table and progression in the table between equal points teams.
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D. Cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents among tied teams.
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E. Limited relative point advantage over all conference opponents among tied teams. The formula includes a cap of 42 points scored on offense and 48 points allowed on defense.
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F. Random drawing of the teams with the same number of points.
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 SEC Championship Game and the opponent will be determined by tiebreaker.
If a tiebreaker step results in two teams being tied in the conference, both teams will qualify for the SEC Championship game. To determine seeding, both teams will go through the two-team tiebreaker process until the tie is broken, which will then determine home/away allocation for the SEC Championship. The game will be played on December 7 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
In 1992, the SEC expanded from 10 to 12 teams, added Arkansas and South Carolina, and was split into two divisions, with the Eastern Division winner facing the Western Division winner for the league crown. This created the first FBS conference championship game in college football. The SEC kept the division format to determine participants in the conference championship games after Missouri and Texas A&M joined in 2012.
Current SEC teams have combined to win 14 of the last 19 national championships. Since the start of the 1977 season, only six different schools have won SEC championships in football (Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee).
