You play all season only to have a coin toss determine if your school earns the automatic bid to the FCS playoffs.
That seems harsh but it is what is going to happen in the Ohio Valley Conference.
UT Martin and Southeast Missouri State finished the regular season tied at 5-0 in OVC play. Hence, the auto-bid will be decided by a coin flip.
The schools did not play because of some oddities when it came to how many teams were going to be in the OVC in 2022.
Intercepted!!! There WILL be a coin toss to decide the OVC automatic bid in the FCS Playoffs! pic.twitter.com/lhSUxzLt5W
— Mr Matthew CFB (@MrMatthewCFB) November 19, 2022
And here is how the OVC explains the convoluted tiebreak procedure:
TIEBREAK PROCEDURES
TWO-WAY TIES
(a) A two-way tie shall exist only if the tied teams have the same number of losses.
(b) Should two teams have the same number of losses, and the two teams played each other during the conference season, the winner of the head-to-head contest shall be the league’s postseason representative.
(c) If the two tied teams have the same number of losses, but did not play each other during the conference season, the following procedure shall be utilized to break the tie:
(1) A comparison of each team’s head-to-head record against the team occupying the highest position in the conference standings that each team has played. If one team won its game, they shall be declared the representative.
(2) Should the procedure outlined in item 1 fail to break the tie, the process will continue to the next-place team and beyond until the tie is broken.
(3) When arriving at a group of tied teams that each team has played, composite records between the tying teams shall be utilized to determine if one of the tied teams has won more games against the group of tied teams.
(4) If the procedures described previously fail to break the tie, the representative shall be determined by a coin flip.
This explains how the conference got into such a thicket.
And the winner of the flip is …
THE COIN LANDS ON HEADS AND SEMO HAS THE AUTOMATIC BID pic.twitter.com/kNuXBphIDP
— Mr Matthew CFB (@MrMatthewCFB) November 19, 2022
