A couple of weeks ago, the Pac-10 Conference was being touted as the best conference in college football. And why not, with four teams ranked in the top 15? But, a few upsets later, sentiment is shifting back to the SEC as as the toughest conference. That would be tough to argue at this point, with seven of the league's 12 teams ranked in the top 25, three of them in the top 10.
The Pac-10 appears to be the conference that no one wants to win, except for maybe Arizona State. Aside from UCLA, the Sun Devils are the only unbeaten team in the conference (3-0, 7-0), but came one bad call and a bad kick away from losing to Washington State a couple weeks ago. The Bruins are 3-0 in league play, but have lost two non-conference games (to Utah and Notre Dame), meaning they could be in trouble when it comes time to play the upper-echelon teams like ASU, Cal (this coming weekend), Oregon, and USC.
Speaking of those three, they all have yet to play Arizona State, which has a brutal schedule coming up, with games against Cal, Oregon, UCLA, and USC all in a row after a bye week. The good news is they get two of the better teams at home in Cal and USC, but they travel to Oregon (Autzen Stadium is one of the toughest places to play in the country) and UCLA, which isn't quite as daunting a task as beating the Ducks in Eugene, but is still a road game. Oregon has already played Cal and lost, and will host USC along with the Civil War against arch-rival Oregon State, a team that appears to be up-and-coming. More on them later.
USC's schedule isn't much of a walk in the park, either. After getting a conference breather from Notre Dame this weekend, the Trojans have the best of the rest in the league left on the docket — Oregon, Oregon State, Cal, Arizona State, and UCLA. Can they get through those games without a defeat? A couple weeks into the season, many of the so-called "experts" believed USC could beat a few NFL teams, but after losing to lowly Stanford and hanging on for a touchdown win over not-much-better Arizona, they don't look nearly like the world beaters they were before October rolled around. With only Oregon State and UCLA coming to the Coliseum, it's a safe bet that the Trojans could lose as many as two of those road games (Oregon and Cal are my picks).
Mentioning Cal, they seem to have the easiest road to the Rose Bowl of any of the teams vying for the Pac-10 title. With Oregon and Oregon State already out of the way (although last weekend's loss to the Beavers might spark a little bit of a slide), the Bears have UCLA, Arizona State, and USC sprinkled in among games with league cellar-dwellers Washington State, Washington, and Stanford. However, the only "toughies" they have at home is USC, with back-to-back road games against UCLA (this weekend) and ASU. There's great potential for a split between those two games.
Okay, now to talk about Oregon State. The likelihood of the Beavers winning the Pac-10 is about as likely as Notre Dame winning a BCS berth, but they could make some noise regarding who actually is left standing at the end of the year. With Saturday's upset of Cal in Berkeley, the OSU finds itself on a two-game winning streak with Stanford up next in Corvallis. After a tough trip to USC, the Beavers get Washington at home and then travel to Pullman to face Washington State, both winnable games. To end the season, it's the aforementioned Civil War in Eugene in which — sorry for the cliché — you can throw the record books out. The Beavers could end up being the spoilers for their arch-rivals.
All this begs the question, "Does this mean the Pac-10 isn't very good, or they're so good they can't help but beat each other every weekend?" This question has been asked about the SEC before, and is probably being asked this year, as well, and the consensus answer is always, "They're just that good." But can the Pac-10 command the same respect as the hallowed SEC? Why not, since in their only head-to-head matchup this season, Cal easily handled Tennessee.
All right, that's not a very good reason to say that the Pac-10 is on-par with the SEC, but when one looks at the results this year, the games in which the top teams have either knocked each other off or lost to an underdog have all been fairly close games. Just ask Arkansas — the Razorbacks are just 20 points shy of being undefeated in the conference instead of 0-3, with two of those losses coming by a combined five points.
What it all boils down to is that neither conference can claim supremacy until the season is over and bowls are completed. Any head-to-head matchup might tell the tale, but what is even more telling is which two schools will be in the BCS National Championship game? Could it be Pac-10 vs. SEC? Maybe Arizona State vs. Kentucky, or USC vs. LSU, or Cal vs. South Carolina? Only time, and the polls, will tell, and only after then will we be able to decide if the Pac-10 was worth its mettle this season — or if it was just another year of mediocrity.
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