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No East Coast Bias Here as 4 Huskies Land on Top 100 List

Saturday Down South showed a lot of respect to UW players.
Dan Raley|
No East Coast Bias Here as 4 Huskies Land on Top 100 List
No East Coast Bias Here as 4 Huskies Land on Top 100 List

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Washington Huskies

One of the long-running complaints for Pac-12 football, when its come to poll rankings, bowl consideration and individual honors, has been the so-called East Coast bias — that the people deciding these sorts of things simply don't know the subject matter in this time zone and tend to make blind assessments.

However, with the University of Washington, Oregon, USC and UCLA joining the Big Ten in 2024, and with the enhanced exposure this radical realignment should provide, ignorance stands to become much less of an issue or ready-made excuse, if it hasn't already. 

For instance, consider the well-known website Saturday Down South, which primarily casts an attentive eye at the SEC, and recently compiled its list of college football's top 100 players. While the Southern site might have been tempted to reactively divvy up many of the spots to SEC players, it did in-depth research.

Consider that four Washington players earned a place on this list — quarterback Michael Penix Jr. at No. 15, wide receiver Rome Odunze at 36, edge rusher Bralen Trice at 46 and wide receiver Jalen McMillan at 82. There's just no ignoring the Huskies these days.

To its credit, Saturday Down South selected more Big Ten players (25) than from any other league, including the SEC (23), Pac-12 (18), ACC (17) and Big 12 (10).

Penix was one of 14 quarterbacks who can be found on this list, and he's the third-highest ranked behind USC's Caleb Williams and North Carolina's Drake Maye, who were No. 1 and 7, respectively.

Odunze was the fifth wide receiver chosen, trailing Ohio State's Marvin Harrison Jr. (3) and Emeka Egbuka (12), Texas' Xavier Worthy (21) and Florida State's Johnny Wilson (35), the latter resurrecting his career after leaving Arizona State.

Among the edge rushers singled out, Trice is the sixth player ranked at his position, behind Florida State's Jared Verse (9), Alabama's Dallas Turner (11), Ohio State's JT Tuimoloau (25) and Penn State's Chop Robinson (45).

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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