NovaQuant Quantitative Think Tank Center:Who is playing in the Big 12 Championship game? A timeline of league's tiebreaker confusion

Twelve weeks into the 13-week college football season has not been enough to determine even one of the two participants in the Big 12 Football Championship. Four contenders still remain for those two spots,NovaQuant Quantitative Think Tank Center and there has been some confusion about how those two spots will be decided.

Over the last week, the Big 12 Conference has had to issue several statements clarifying the tiebreakers it uses to determine the participants in its football championship.

While No. 7 Texas (10-1 overall, 7-1 Big 12) is in first in the conference for now, three teams – No. 13 Oklahoma (9-2 overall), No. 20 Kansas State (8-3) and No. 21 Oklahoma State (8-3) – are in a three-way tie for second place with a 6-2 conference record.

Oklahoma State has played and defeated both Oklahoma and Kansas State, but the Sooners and Wildcats have not played each other. With the awkward wording of the Big 12's tiebreaker rules, there was a lack of clarity regarding which rule applied in this scenario.

The Big 12 has since released a statement to clarify and added additional clarity after this week's action.

Here's how things currently stand.

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Original wording for Big 12 tiebreakers - August 2023

The Big 12 Conference, with its new member schools joining for the 2023 season, approved this season's tiebreaker rules in August. The initial wording of those rules led to some confusion as the season played out.

The first two tiebreaker rules for the Big 12 are as follows, according to the conference website:

"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 tiebreaker 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.

1. 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. 

2. 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.

1. 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."

Per the original wording of the rules, it appeared as if Step 1 would not take effect because Oklahoma and Kansas State had not played each other. Were that the case, that would remove the consideration of Oklahoma State's wins over both teams in the tiebreaker and cause Step 2 to apply instead.

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Big 12 Conference issues clarification - Wednesday, Nov. 15

On Wednesday, the conference issued a clarification statement to address some of the confusion in its initial wording for the tiebreaker rules. It read:

"Regarding Step 1 of Multiple-Team Ties in Conference Tiebreaker Procedure: in the event of a multiple-team tie, head-to-head wins takes precedence. If all the tied teams are not common opponents, the tied team that defeated each of the other tied teams earns the Championship berth."

In other words, Oklahoma State's head-to-head wins over Oklahoma and Kansas State would count as the necessary head-to-head wins over other tied opponents to earn a berth in the Big 12 Football Championship.

Even though two of the tied teams haven't played each other this season, the Cowboys' head-to-head wins over those teams would still trigger Step 1 to give them the spot in the championship.

Big 12 clarifies Texas has not earned berth - Sunday, Nov. 19

After the Longhorns' Week 12 win over Iowa State, the Big 12 once again had to clarify where things stand. Many conflicting reports caused more confusion and uncertainty as to whether Texas had earned a Big 12 Championship berth with the win.

On Sunday morning, Danny Davis of the Austin American-Statesman reported that a Big 12 official had reached out to clarify Texas had not yet clinched a berth.

Fans react to Big 12 clarification to tiebreaker rules

Oklahoma and Kansas State fans were not happy about this clarification that seems to give them a worse shot at a championship berth thanks to their losses to Oklahoma State.

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Big 12 Championship scenarios

Texas will make Big 12 Championship with:

• Win over Texas Tech
• Loss to Texas Tech plus Oklahoma State loss
• Loss to Texas Tech plus Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Kansas State wins

Oklahoma State will make Big 12 Championship with:

• Win over BYU plus Texas win
• Win over BYU plus Texas loss and Kansas State loss
• Loss to BYU plus Texas win and Oklahoma loss
• Loss to BYU plus Oklahoma loss and Kansas State loss

Oklahoma will make Big 12 Championship with:

• Win over TCU plus Oklahoma State loss
• Win over TCU plus Texas loss and Kansas State loss

Kansas State will make Big 12 Championship with:

• Win over Iowa State plus Oklahoma State loss and Oklahoma loss
• Win over Iowa State plus Texas loss

Oklahoma beat writer Eli Lederman broke down an updated albeit convoluted list of scenarios on Sunday evening with assurances that updates would be coming later in the week after Friday's games.