[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Ragnar

I have a tie breaker question. Lets say 3 teams are tied for the division win. The first three tie breakers are....

Best won loss tie % in games among the clubs
Best won loss tied % in division games.
Best won loss tie % in common games.

The teams are 2-2 in the first. Team A and team B are tied for best Div record while team C has an inferior Div record. The exact same scenario plays out for the 3rd tie breaker.

Originally Posted by Ragnar

The reason I am asking this is because team C swept team B during the season. But Team C lost the 3 team tie breaker for the division.

So am I to assume if another team from a different Div also had a tie then team C would beat out team B? But not if it is only between team B and C in the same Div?

Based on my reading of the rules, and the descriptions of the tiebreakers used to sort out the standings in the 2002 NFLseason (which featured a three-way tie for the AFC East, with those three teams being tied with two clubs outside the division for the second wild card spot, all five teams having 9-7 records), this is what I think happens.

First, the division tie is settled. The teams have the following results in head-to-head play:

    A    B    C
----------------
A  ...  2-0  0-2
B  0-2  ...  2-0
C  2-0  0-2  ...
----------------
   2-2  2-2  2-2

Since the teams have the same combined head-to-head record, it moves to the next step, divisional record. Under that C is eliminated while A and B are tied with the same divisional record. The tiebreaking then reverts to the first step of the two-team procedure. That goes to B due to it having a better record in head-to-head games against A. So B is the division winner. (In post #5 you had A beat out B in the two-way tiebreaker, but that's not possible given what you have said about C having swept B during the regular season. The only way A, B, and C can be tied in combined head-to-head record—the first step of the three-way tiebreaker—is for the clubs to have the head-to-head records shown above. In which case B is the division winner, not A.)

Now the wild card is determined. A, C, and a club outside their division are tied for that. The first step there for a three-way tie is to use the division tiebreakers for clubs within the same division. Since A has a better head-to-head record against C, C is eliminated from contention (and gets third place in the division while A would be in second place). That leaves two teams—A and the club outside its division—tied for the wild card. The two-team method for wild card ties is then used, which starts with head-to-head record.