“If all the tied teams are not common opponents, the tied team that defeated each of the other tied teams earns the Championship berth.”
As George Stoia of On3’s Sooner Scoop pointed out, the original tiebreaker rules did not have that sentence in there. The language has been added to Step 1.
Yes, because with the 4 new teams we no longer have a perfect round robin. The Big XII always had this sort of parity, but because everyone played everyone it worked out fairly nicely for the last 8 years.
But this year Texas doesn’t play OK State and K-State doesn’t play oklahoma. Ostensibly, the Wildcats and Pokes gain an unfair advantage by not having to play both of the SEC-bound teams, hence the clarification. The issue though is that the tie that may need breaking is between those two exact teams.