We still control our conference destiny

[Ghost of the HEB]

Been seeing some who think we now need UCLA to lose if want to make the championship game. Folks seem to be forgetting there’s a new format this year that takes the two highest winning percentages in conference play. If Utah wins out, all non-ucla teams will have at least one conf loss and Utah will hold head-to-head tie-breaker over USC and Oregon.
Does winning out feel very likely after that game in Pasadena? No — but it also didn’t feel very likely after that Oregon state debacle last year.

[NarfUte]

Not sure how the new rules work, but if Utah won out and USC won out after that concievably there would be 3 conference teams at 8-1 with a rotating tiebreaker over eachother. Best case would be Utah win out (extremely tough task) and USC or UCLA to drop another aside from their matchup.

Reminder that no team has gone unscathed through a Pac-12 schedule, best has been 8-1.

[Ghost of the HEB]

Multiple-Team Ties

In the event of a tie between more than two teams, the following procedures will be used. After one team has an advantage and is “seeded”, all remaining teams in the multiple-team tie-breaker will repeat the multiple-team tie-breaking procedure. If at any point the multiple-team tie is reduced to two teams, the two-team tie-breaking procedure will be applied.

Head-to-head (best cumulative win percentage in games among the tied teams). If not every tied team has played each other, go to step 2.
Win percentage against all common conference opponents (must be common among all teams involved in the tie)
Record against the next highest placed common opponent in the standings (based on record in all games played within the conference), proceeding through the standings.
When arriving at another group of tied teams while comparing records, use each team’s win percentage against the collective tied teams as a group (prior to that group’s own tie-breaking procedure) rather than the performance against individual tied teams.
Combined win percentage in conference games of conference opponents (ie, strength of conference schedule)
Highest ranking by SportSource Analytics (team Rating Score metric) following the last weekend of regular-season games.
Coin toss

[NarfUte]

Yeah, so that’s where it gets difficult. Say Utah, UCLA, USC finish the conference at 8-1. Utah misses Cal and UW, USC misses Oregon and Washington, UCLA misses Oregon State and Wazzu. Now, this probably isn’t happening but fun to think about.

[Yergensen]

Absolutely, the only door that UCLA closed for us was CFP.  Everything else is on the table still.  Let’s make a statement against USC and go from there.  See you there, gonna be lit! (or whatever the kids are saying)

[Charlie]

USC only plays UCLA in a close matchup after us.  UCLA only has Oregon and USC left as a close matchup left.  Oregon only has us and UCLA, maybe maybe OSU, as a close matchup.  Everyone but Cal has 2 losses so are out of the mix unless unthinkable things happen and Cal has too far to come to make it.  So our margin of error is now gone, we need the other three to lose a game just to be on even terms and they each have a muligan to use against us.  Someone is going to have 1 or fewer losses so we need to push ahead of the other 2.  It is up hill but it is doable.  At this point we should assume the CCG will require 1 or fewer losses.