One of the biggest shortcomings surrounding Pac-12 football is well-known: The conference — despite being a Power Five league — hasn’t produced a College Football Playoff participant the past five seasons, and has only two in the eight-year history of the playoff.
How much of that can be attributed to the Pac-12, as it is currently made up, having a handful of programs that are seen as perennial underachievers?
With the 2022 season just weeks away, ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg released his annual look at college football’s most underachieving programs right now.
Of the 16 programs Adam Rittenberg identified over six different tiers, four of them — or 25% of the list — are from the Pac-12.
That included the two — USC and UCLA — that are headed to the Big Ten in 2024.
The Trojans and Bruins were lumped together with Texas in the second tier, right below Rittenberg’s top choice for the sport’s top underachieving program, Texas A&M.
Regarding UCLA, Rittenberg wrote: “UCLA has only three Top 25 finishes since 1998 and only one bowl appearance since 2015 (though last year’s team would have played if not for a COVID-19 outbreak).
“UCLA got lazy with its program and stopped investing, although the hiring of coach Chip Kelly and the construction of the Wasserman Football Center are significant changes. Still, the program has massively underachieved for a generation. Perhaps the upcoming move to the Big Ten will spark a program that enjoys many natural advantages.”
Despite winning national championships in 2003 and 2004 under Pete Carroll, and playing for a national title in 2005, USC makes sense as an underachiever for several reasons, Rittenberg argued.
“USC has been susceptible to underachievement — before coach Pete Carroll arrived after the 2000 season, the program went 65-52-1 with only two conference titles from 1991 to 2000,” Rittenberg wrote. “But the period since Carroll’s return to the NFL has been marred by poor leadership, overly insular thinking on key hires and utter dysfunction.”
The Trojans also have made some moves this offseason, including the Big Ten announcement, that at least sets up USC to experience a resurgence, if it can shore up its issues.
“The team made its splashiest coaching hire ever in Lincoln Riley, and finally has a solid athletic director in Mike Bohn. As the Big Ten transition looms, USC’s next step needs to be CFP appearances,” Rittenberg wrote.
The ESPN writer also identified two other Pac-12 schools — Colorado and Arizona — as programs whose best days are behind them at this point and merely making a bowl game is a high watermark.
The Buffaloes won a national championship in 1990, but the past two decades have been a lesson in patience.
“The Buffs have finished in the AP rankings only once since 2002. No one expects Colorado, which has a challenging recruiting location and faced financial difficulties for years, to annually compete for the Pac-12 championship,” Rittenberg wrote. “Regular bowl appearances, on the other hand, are a reasonable expectation.”
The Wildcats, meanwhile, have never won a Pac-12 title since joining the league in 1978 and have finished a year ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 poll just once since ending the 1998 season No. 4.
“Tucson is a mediocre location for recruits, and the program has to extend its reach to other areas. There are reasons Arizona has never reached a Rose Bowl despite joining the conference in 1978,” Rittenberg wrote. “But we’re not talking about Rose Bowls in this tier — any bowl appearance would lift the mood in Tucson.”