How does Texas reach the SEC Championship Game? The tiebreaker process is a doozy...

With three regular season games left, the Texas Longhorns are 7-2 and 4-1 in the Southeastern Conference. That places the Longhorns behind a couple of teams with 5-1 league records and two programs with 5-0 marks in the SEC: Texas A&M and Alabama.

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As the end of the season approaches, and as the College Football Playoff rankings start filtering out beginning tonight, increased attention is placed on who could make it to Atlanta for the SEC Championship Game.

For all intents and purposes, that game would have a first-round bye in the 2025 College Football Playoff as the true prize — unless the committee somehow thinks the SEC champion is not one of the four best teams in the nation.

So how does Texas get there?

First, the standings…

	conf	cpct	overall	opct	home	road	neutral	strk
Texas A&M	5-0	1.000	8-0	1.000	5-0	3-0	0-0	W8
Alabama	5-0	1.000	7-1	0.875	4-0	3-1	0-0	W7
Ole Miss	5-1	0.833	8-1	0.889	6-0	2-1	0-0	W2
Georgia	5-1	0.833	7-1	0.875	4-1	3-0	0-0	W4
Texas	4-1	0.800	7-2	0.778	4-0	2-2	1-0	W4
Oklahoma	3-2	0.600	7-2	0.778	4-1	3-0	0-1	W1
Vanderbilt	3-2	0.600	7-2	0.778	5-0	2-2	0-0	L1
Tennessee	3-3	0.500	6-3	0.667	3-2	2-1	1-0	L1
Missouri	2-2	0.500	6-2	0.750	5-1	1-1	0-0	L1
LSU	2-3	0.400	5-3	0.625	4-1	1-2	0-0	L2
Florida	2-3	0.400	3-5	0.375	3-2	0-3	0-0	L1
Mississippi State	1-4	0.200	5-4	0.556	3-2	2-2	0-0	W1
Auburn	1-5	0.167	4-5	0.444	2-3	2-2	0-0	L1
Kentucky	1-5	0.167	3-5	0.375	2-3	1-2	0-0	W1
South Carolina	1-6	0.143	3-6	0.333	2-3	0-3	1-0	L4
Arkansas	0-5	0.000	2-7	0.222	1-4	0-3	1-0	L7

Now, the tiebreaker procedures

Via the SEC.

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.

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Let’s just pray it doesn’t get to step six.

There exists at least two scenarios where Texas wins out and doesn’t make it to Atlanta. Using our our old friend bball.notnothing.net, the scenarios where the Longhorns win out but don’t play in the conference championship game are very plausible.

Would that be all that bad? A question for another day.

The 7-1 Texas scenarios

The Florida loss rears its ugly head.

The site does add a disclaimer: “Calculating the CRSM isn’t horribly complicated, but adding score inputs to all the games would add a layer of complexity that would make the website much more difficult to use.”

But why is Texas behind A&M if the Longhorns beat the Aggies in the above hypotheticals?

Per bball.notnothing.net: “If three or more teams are tied, then round-robin record is only used if every tied team played all the other tied teams OR one team beat all the other teams OR one team lost to all the other teams. Otherwise, it is ignored and we move to the next step.“

Here are a few different scenarios that gets Texas in.

There are more, but going through all of them… it’d take a lot of brainpower.

Is there a path to Atlanta at 6-2?

Yes…

How about back-to-back weeks playing the Aggies?

Because of the variance in number of games played (some teams have played six SEC games, some have only played five, and Missouri has only played four), this is a process that will become clearer over the coming weeks. Texas gets to sit at home and watch some of the chaos sort itself out this weekend while on bye.

But the chaos is what makes this all so exciting… and a chore to unravel.

Remaining games for contenders

• Alabama: LSU, Oklahoma, Eastern Illinois, at Auburn
• Texas A&M: At Missouri, South Carolina, Samford, at Texas
• Ole Miss: The Citadel, Florida, bye, at Mississippi State
• Georgia: At Mississippi State, Texas, Charlotte, vs. Georgia Tech
• Texas: Bye, at Georgia, Arkansas, Texas A&M
• Oklahoma: Bye, at Alabama, Missouri, LSU
• Vanderbilt: Auburn, bye, Kentucky, at Tennessee
• Missouri: Texas A&M, Mississippi State, at Oklahoma, at Arkansas

Remember, those non-conference games don’t count toward SEC standings, but they would certainly affect standing within the CFP rankings.

And, of course, people remember what you do in November