SALT LAKE CITY — Pac-12 football has been full of surprises on a weekly basis this season.
Who would have ever expected winless UCLA to score 50 second-half points to knock off unbeaten Washington State earlier this season? How about an unheralded Cal team going up to Seattle and shocking league favorite Washington? Or Arizona State losing at home to a Colorado team that has since lost three straight, the last two by an 86-13 margin?
This past week we had another couple of head-scratchers in the Pac as UCLA, considered the worst team in the league, went on the road and beat a Stanford squad that had upset Washington the week before. Then Oregon State won a road game at Cal, a week after losing by 45 at home to Utah.
It’s one of the reasons why the Pac-12 has been irrelevant on the national playoff scene for awhile, not making the four-team playoffs the past two years and only twice, fewest of the Power Five conferences, since 2014. They don’t have enough “great” teams and not enough terrible teams to trample over. Too many teams are just good enough to spring a surprise.
Of the 10 major college FBS conferences, the Pac-12 is the only one without a winless team in league play. It is also tied with a couple of other leagues with the fewest number of unbeaten teams with one.
Someone who knows all about the Pac-12’s parity is Utah coach Kyle Whittingham, who offered his thoughts on the subject earlier this week.
“It’s one of our greatest strengths and maybe our biggest weakness,” Whittingham said. “We cannibalize each other and every week somebody knocks off somebody. I think (the league) is more balanced this year than it’s ever been. Somebody that you had no expectation of winning, comes up with a win.”
You can go around in circles comparing results of Pac-12 games.
UCLA beat Stanford last week and earlier Stanford beat Oregon State, but the Beavers beat UCLA. And there’s this — Arizona State beat Washington State, which beat Colorado, which beat Arizona State.
“We cannibalize each other and every week somebody knocks off somebody. I think (the league) is more balanced this year than it’s ever been. Somebody that you had no expectation of winning, comes up with a win.”
It makes your head spin.
Since the league expanded to 12 teams in 2011, 10 of the 12 schools have won or shared division titles — all six in the South and everyone except Cal and Oregon State in the North.
Compare that to the SEC, where just six of the 14 schools have won or shared division titles in the last eight years. You can pretty much pencil in Alabama to win the West every year (seven straight titles) and Georgia or Florida to win the East (all but two of the last eight). Don’t expect Vanderbilt, Kentucky or Arkansas to be winning titles any time soon.
At least the Utes and Oregon beat fellow ranked opponents last week to keep the conference pertinent in the chase for the College Football Playoff, even if it is a bit of a long shot at this point. If not, it would have been a disaster for the league, nationally speaking.
If the Ducks hadn’t come back to defeat Washington in the fourth quarter and the Utes had fumbled away a win in the rain against Arizona State, the league may not have had any teams left in the top 15 and their chances of qualifying for the national playoffs would have dropped to zero.
In the latest rankings, the Ducks and Utes are ranked 11th and 12th, respectively, but to get into the playoffs, a team must be in the top four in the CFP rankings after the league championship game on Dec. 6.
The fact that the Utes and Ducks don’t play each other in the regular season is good news for the league. If both can stay unbeaten the rest of the regular season and both emerge as division champions (the Utes need USC to lose at least once), the winner of the Pac-12 championship game might have a shot at sneaking into the playoffs.
In order for that to come true, a few other things need to happen.
The SEC, which has five teams in the top 10, needs to have its top teams beat each other up during the next month, which is possible since there are five games among those teams still on the schedule.
In the Big Ten, unbeaten Ohio State, which has four tough games left, against Wisconsin this week, Penn State on Nov. 23 and Michigan on Nov. 30, plus the Big Ten championship the following week, needs to lose.
No. 8 Notre Dame, which made last year’s playoff, also needs to lose and this week’s game at Michigan will be the Irish’s toughest. Stanford could do the conference a favor by knocking off the Irish next month in California.
The key for the Pac-12’s two best teams is not to trip up against one of the league’s lesser lights over the next month and a half. If they can do this, the Pac-12 may be back in the national spotlight for a change.