Pioneer Football League modifies playoff tiebreaker

Published February 05, 2015

St. Louis, MO (SportsNetwork.com) - The Pioneer Football League's tiebreaker for determining its automatic qualifying bid to the FCS playoffs will be comprised only through internal criteria.

Presidents of the 11 member schools recently met by teleconference and voted to remove any use of outside rankings to determine the league's representative.

The steps have been replaced by the addition of a league strength of victory criteria followed by a league strength of schedule criteria. Both steps will be based only on league games.

The PFL had an automatic bid for the first time last season and needed to use a tiebreaker between co-champions Butler and Marist. The league used a combination of the seven computer ratings utilized by College Sporting News' Gridiron Power Index. It also planned to use the NCAA's Simple Rating System, but the ratings were unavailable at the time the league determined its tiebreaker.

Butler claimed the automatic bid and then lost to Tennessee State in the first round of the playoffs.

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