The Press Box · College Football
The exact procedure encoded for each league, with sources.
10 FBS leagues · 2026 through week 7 · 218 conference games played
· from ESPN
Teams are separated first by conference winning percentage. Only teams on the same percentage are tied, and a tie is resolved with the conference's own published procedure — the two-team list when exactly two teams are involved, the multi-team list otherwise.
When a step splits a tied group, each subgroup restarts the procedure from step one, dropping to the two-team list if only two teams remain. That is the “revert to the beginning” language every conference uses.
A step that does not apply yet is skipped. A step that cannot be computed from public data — a proprietary analytics rating, or a commissioner's draw — stops the procedure, and the tie is reported as unresolved rather than decided by a step the conference would never reach.
Verified against the conference's own published procedure · verified 2026-09-20
The two teams with the best conference winning percentage meet in Atlanta. If exactly two teams tie for first, both play in the championship game and the procedure only decides the home team. The capped scoring margin caps points scored at 42 and points allowed at 48 in each conference game; this build compares the per-game average so the step stays fair if teams play a different number of conference games.
Verified against the conference's own published procedure · verified 2026-09-20
Six published steps. Step 5 is the SportSource Analytics Team Rating Score, which is not published publicly, so a tie that survives step 4 is reported here as unresolved rather than guessed at.
Verified against the conference's own published procedure · verified 2026-09-20
Schedules are unbalanced, so the multi-team head-to-head step only separates teams when the tied group played a full round robin, or when one team beat every other tied team.
Based on reporting of the conference's published procedure · verified 2026-09-20
New for 2026, after the 2025 five-way tie. Twelve members play nine conference games and five play eight, so the league deliberately dropped the opponent-based steps: head-to-head first, then the SportSource Analytics Team Success Ranking, then a draw. Because the Team Success Ranking is not public, ties that head-to-head cannot settle are reported here as unresolved.
Based on reporting of the conference's published procedure · verified 2026-09-20
A multi-team tie without a full round robin goes straight to the College Football Playoff rankings, which only exist from early November onward; before then such a tie is reported as unresolved.
Best-effort reconstruction - re-check before relying on it · verified 2026-09-20
CUSA rewrote its procedure for 2024 to line up closely with the American and the Mountain West. The official policy is published only as a PDF; this ordering is modelled on those leagues and should be re-checked against the PDF before it is relied on late in the season.
Verified against the conference's own published procedure · verified 2026-09-20
The MAC puts the SportSource Analytics Team Rating Score third, ahead of the opponent-based steps. That is faithfully encoded here, which means MAC ties surviving the common-opponents step are reported as unresolved.
Based on reporting of the conference's published procedure · verified 2026-09-20
The league leans on the CFP ranking and then an average of designated computer ratings. The computer composite is not reproducible from public feeds, so it halts the procedure here.
Based on reporting of the conference's published procedure · verified 2026-09-20
The only FBS league still using divisions: the East and West champions meet for the title. Each team plays six divisional games and two crossovers, so the divisional record carries most of the weight.
Based on reporting of the conference's published procedure · verified 2026-09-20
The rebuilt eight-team league plays a true round robin (seven conference games), so head-to-head resolves almost every tie. The championship game is hosted by the higher seed.
Verified against the conference's own published procedure · verified 2026-09-20
Independents play no conference schedule; they are listed by overall record.