Pac Tracks: Good Year For The Conference And It's Only Going to Get Better?
The Pac 12 got left out again, little Larry didn’t get picked to play and Lucy pulled the football away from Charlie Brown.
The conference everyone said didn’t have a chance was never really given a chance. National pundits who wrote off the Pac 12 after Oregon's last-minute lost to Auburn over Labor Day held to their predictive guns even as Oregon was ranked No. 6 and Utah was ranked No. 7.
Pundits never like to be questioned or proven wrong.
Never mind Oregon, had it not lost a three-point thriller at Arizona State, would have edged Oklahoma out for the No. 4 spot in the four-team playoff announced Sunday.
Pac 12 prosperity simply didn’t fit a national narrative put forth that the West Coast is undeserving of anyone’s respect because, frankly, they play their games too late.
Paul Finebaum of ESPN actually said the Oregon AD chairing the selection committee could not be trusted.
My esteemed TMG colleague Tom Luicci, out of New Jersey, by way of Rutgers and Monmouth Racetrack, reckoned on social media there were five teams in the SEC better than Oregon and Utah even though Oregon ended up No. 6 in the final ranking ahead of Florida, Alabama and Auburn. And Utah, despite its abject awfulness and unworthiness, finished ranked ahead of this year's Iron Bowl.
No good Pac 12 season, though, goes unpunished. Utah allowed 37 and lost by 22 points to now sixth-ranked 10 Oregon and dropped six spots to No 11.
Georgia allowed 37 points and lost by 27 to now No. 1 LSU and dropped one spot to No. 5.
But, but BUT Utah didn’t post a single win over a team ranked in the final CFP top-25 ranking! (Neither did Alabama).
Utah's best non-conference win was lousy BYU (which defeated USC, Tennessee and Boise State).
The committee was also apparently so desperate to give Clemson a win over a top 25 opponent it dropped four-loss Virginia one position, to No. 24, after a 62-17 LOSS to Clemson.
If you’re scoring at home, again, Georgia and Virginia lost title games by the combined score of 99-27 and dropped two total spots in the rankings.
Oregon and Utah, in their final two late-season defeats by a final margin of 25 points, were punished 14 total ranking positions.
People seem to get a vicarious thrill out of trashing the Pacific Coast. We get it. They don’t like our weather, our politics, the depth of our passion bucket, or the fact we only half-fill some of our football arenas.
But we here in Westworld are determined to make this a Happy Monday and find some positives to take away from the 2019 season.
First off, the league’s bowl prospects look promising.
USC is a 1.5 underdog against Iowa in the Holiday Bowl? You should take that bet standing on your head.
Cal, Arizona State, Washington and Utah are all favored in their bowl games, while Oregon is getting three points against Wisconsin in the Rose.
Repeat: Any year Cal is favored by six points in a bowl is a good year. Washington State, admittedly, has a tough draw against Air Force in the Cheez-It.
There is no reason the Pac can’t go 5-2 in the bowls.
Our quest to find something nice to say about every Pac 12 football program continues:
North:
Oregon: Should have, seriously, defeated Auburn and Arizona State and finished 13-0.
Oregon State: Vastly improved under coach Jonathan Smith, just missed becoming bowl eligible and no longer a national laughing stock.
California: Finished 7-5 playing most of the season without injured quarterback Chase Garbers. Also: Won at Mississippi.
Washington: Promotion of defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake to head coach could be just what the cloud-of-dusters needed.
Washington State: Scored 63 points in a single game (oh, wait…)
Stanford: Defeated Northwestern, which defeated Illinois, which defeated No. 8 Wisconsin.
South
Utah: Kyle Whittingham may be 0-2 in Pac 12 title-game tries but he is the league’s best bowl coach with an overall record of 11-2.
USC: Stop screaming for a second and consider Clay Helton may have actually done a C-plus decent job considering his starting QB got knocked out in the opener.
UCLA: Chip Kelly’s program just keeps getting better? The Bruins "boasted" a one-win improvement, from three to four, in 2019.
Colorado: Beat Nebraska and Washington in the same season. Mel Tucker looks like a solid hire.
Arizona State: Defeated Michigan State and Oregon in the same season. Herm Edwards not the whack-job hire we all said it was?
Arizona: Played eight-win Hawaii tough.