The Big 12 Conference conducts a championship in football at the conclusion of every regular season. The representatives in that championship games are the winners of its two divisions. However, when there are ties for those two division titles, the conference has implemented tie-breaking procedures to determine which teams will get a chance to play in the conference championship game.
Two-Team Tiebreaker
If two teams are tied for the North or South Division titles, the procedure for breaking the tie is simple. All division opponents play each other once every year. The division title goes to the team that won the game that was played earlier in the year.
Three-Team Tiebreaker
The Big 12 has contingencies if three teams tie for a division title. The first factor to break the tie is to compare the records of the three teams in their individual games. So if team A beat team B and team B beat team C, team A would win the title if it defeated team C. If team C won that game, the next factor the Big 12 uses to break ties is the record of each team against division opponents. If it is still tied, then the Big 12 looks at how the tied teams did against the fourth-place team in the division, then the fifth-place team and finally the sixth-place team.
Rankings
If the three teams remain tied after all the competitive tiebreakers are imposed, the Big 12 determines the representative by the rankings in the Bowl Championship Series poll. The team with the highest ranking following the final Big 12 regular season game gets to represent the division in the Big 12 championship game. However, if two of the tied teams are within one spot of each other, the representative in the championship game will be the team that won the head-to-head matchup.
2008 Controversy
In 2008, Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech tied for the Big 12 South title. Since none of the three teams swept the season series with the other two combatants, the division representative went to the highest-ranked team. Oklahoma closed its regular season with a victory over state rival Oklahoma State and ended up with the with a one-spot edge over Texas in the ranking. That enraged Texas supporters because the Longhorns had defeated the Sooners in the head-to-head matchup. It was after the 2008 season that the Big 12 decided to use the head-to-head matchup factor if teams were within one spot of each other. That is known in the Big 12 Conference as the "Longhorn Rule."
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