Does Ohio State Still Control Its Own Destiny For The Big Ten Championship?

The Ohio State Buckeyes lost their first game of the 2024 college football season on Saturday, falling 32-31 on the road at Oregon.

However, thanks to the new 12-team College Football Playoff format, one regular season loss isn’t a big blow to a team’s chances to win the national championship. The Buckeyes remain alive and well, and firmly in control of their own destiny there. If they win the rest of their regular season games, there’s no realistic scenario where they get left out of the CFP field, and if they win all of their games there, they’ll be the national champions.

When it comes to a spot in the Big Ten Championship Game, things are almost that clear-cut, too.

Right now, there are three Big Ten teams with unbeaten records in conference play; Oregon, Penn State, and Indiana. The Buckeyes have games remaining against the Nittany Lions and Hoosiers, so if OSU wins out, Oregon is the only team that could even possibly have an unbeaten record in league play. If that happens, the Ducks would automatically grab one of the two spots in Indianapolis.

Then, the other spot could come down to a tiebreaker between any teams with one loss. Here’s the list of tiebreakers from the Big Ten.

1. Head-to-head results during the regular season
2. Record against all common conference opponents
3. Record against mutual conference opponents with best record
4. Best Big Ten winning percentage of conference opponents
5. Highest ranking by SportSource Analytics after the regular season
6. Random draw of tied teams

Assuming Ohio State wins out and finishes with one loss, the only other teams that they could be tied with would be Penn State (who would have a loss to Ohio State and lose the first tiebreaker), Indiana (who would have a loss to Ohio State and lose the first tiebreaker), Iowa (who has a loss to Ohio State and loses the first tie-breaker), Illinois, and Wisconsin. Nebraska and Michigan have only one conference loss right now, but would both pick up a second against the Buckeyes in this scenario and fall out of the tie.

So there are only two teams that could potentially complicate things, Illinois and Wisconsin. The Buckeyes do not play either of those teams, and if either or both of them win out, that could move things farther down the tiebreaker list, where things start to get messy.

The specific tiebreaker scenarios will hinge on which teams are part of the tie, and there are far too many combinations to work through all of them right now. The interesting question is whether there are any scenarios where the Buckeyes could conceivably lose a tiebreaker. The answer is, potentially, yes.

If Illinois wins out, they would have a win over Oregon, and the regular season could end with a scenario with Oregon, Ohio State, Illinois, and Penn State all finishing 8-1. Is it likely? Not really, but it is possible.

Illinois would have a win over the Ducks, a loss to Penn State, and would not have played Ohio State.

Oregon would have a win over Ohio State, a loss to Illinois, and would not have played Penn State.

Penn State would have a win over Illinois, a loss to Ohio State, and would not have played Oregon.

Ohio State would have a win over Penn State, a loss to Oregon, and would not have played Illinois.

This would result in each team finishing 1-1 in the head-to-head tiebreakers and push it down to the second tiebreaker, the record against common conference opponents, which would also be a tie (none of them are common opponents with the rest of the group, and they would all be unbeaten outside of those games). The third tiebreaker would also be the same.

That would get you to the fourth tiebreaker, the best Big Ten winning percentage of conference opponents. So the spots in Indianapolis could come down to whether teams like Rutgers, Maryland, or Michigan State finished with a better Big Ten record this season.

However, if Indiana also finishes 8-1 and turns it into a 5-way tie (theoretically possible because the Hoosiers don’t play Penn State, Oregon, or Illinois), then the Buckeyes would have a 2-1 record among the tiebreaker schools and would be the home team in the Big Ten Championship Game.

There are other (fairly unlikely) scenarios where Wisconsin and (possibly) Illinois or win out, with the Badgers beating Oregon and Penn State in the process. That would leave the Buckeyes, Badgers, (potentially) Indiana, and the winner of the Illinois/Oregon game with one conference loss each.

In that case, Wisconsin would be 1-0 against the rest of the group, unless Oregon beats Illinois, in which case the Badgers would be 2-0… you get the picture. It gets messy and complicated quickly.

The bottom line is that, yes, there are theoretically some specific sequences of results that could lead to an 8-1 Ohio State team missing out on the Big Ten Championship Game, but they are pretty convoluted and fairly unlikely.

For now, the big takeaway is that the best-case scenario for the Buckeyes is to have the Illini and Badgers each lose at least one more game. That eliminates some of the more esoteric tiebreakers and sets up a scenario where an 8-1 Ohio State team would have head-to-head wins over Penn State and Indiana to punch their ticket to Indianapolis.

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