Note: You can always find our latest on college football’s conference tiebreakers in 2023 at this link.
For most of college football, Week 9 has yet to begin, but Conference USA finished theirs last night, and we’re keeping the tiebreaker scenarios updated. Here’s what we know:
Conference USA does not have current tiebreakers published, at least from what we’ve found, but they do have Liberty listed as having clinched a spot in the conference championship, and there are places on their website which say two-way ties are decided by head-to-head result, which we believe is currently the case. Similarly, the website confirms our suspicion that Jacksonville State is ineligible for the conference championship while they complete their transition to the FBS level of Division I, though we’ve been unable to confirm whether that decision comes from the conference or from the NCAA (our guess is that it’s the conference, based on what we see in the ASUN’s college basketball tournament).
Given all of that, here’s the rundown:
- Liberty has qualified for the Conference USA Championship, sitting at 6–0 and holding the head-to-head tiebreakers over both New Mexico State and Western Kentucky.
- New Mexico State, Western Kentucky, Louisiana Tech, UTEP, and Middle Tennessee are all theoretically alive for the second conference championship spot, but NMSU (4–1) and WKU (2–2) have the edge over LT (2–3), UTEP (2–3), and MTSU (1–3).
- NMSU and WKU have yet to play. They’ll play on November 11th in Bowling Green.
- NMSU also has yet to play Jacksonville State. They’ll play on November 25th in Las Cruces.
- None of the 3-loss teams have beaten NMSU or WKU. Louisiana Tech has lost to both. UTEP has lost to NMSU. MTSU has lost to WKU. Between the 3-loss teams, Louisiana Tech has beaten UTEP while MTSU has beaten Louisiana Tech. Conference USA is playing a full single round robin this year, so all matchups will eventually have a head-to-head winner.
- In case something changes with Jacksonville State’s eligibility: The Gamecocks have beaten WKU, lost to Liberty, and beaten everyone else except for NMSU and Louisiana Tech, whom they have yet to play.
Overall, it’s looking likely that the championship game’s second participant will be decided by who wins the NMSU/WKU game, though WKU may have to sweep its other three opponents to make that the deciding factor. Of the 3-loss teams, Louisiana Tech is in the worst shape thanks to their losses to both NMSU and WKU, but we can still find a path for them to finish in second place, something made easier by the absence of publicly available three-way tiebreaker procedures. There are still too many games remaining to outline specific scenarios (there are 512 combinations of possible results remaining involving NMSU, WKU, and MTSU alone), but we’ll keep you updated, on Conference USA and the rest of the FBS.
