Another crazy week in college football is over and the state of Mississippi is the epicenter of the college football world. That state boasts the two best football teams in the country right now.
Well, out here in the West things are starting to work themselves out just a little bit. After a week where Oregon lost, the Sun Devils won on a miracle catch, UCLA lost on a missed field goal, Stanford blew a great chance at Notre Dame, and the Washington State quarterback passed for 734 yards AND lost people thought what would be on the menu for week seven. It was an awesome week six, so it was interesting to see how week seven played out.
Here are a few things I noticed about week seven and how it may affect things down the road for teams in the Pac-12.
One, UCLA is done. There season may end up being decent, but they ran themselves out of the college football playoff discussion. Maybe I should say Oregon ran them out of the playoff discussion. The Bruins offense had over 500 yards of total offense and lost. They ran the ball for over 300 yards and lost. If a team does this they usually win, but not the Bruins. Adding insult to injury, their crosstown rivals, the Trojans go down to Wildcat country and pull out a win. The Bruin defense was supposed to be the side of the ball that would dominate games for them and provide the offense with stops, so they could score more points. It's not working out they way they envisioned.
Two, Arizona was a bit overrated in terms of ranking. Not that rankings mean anything to the playoff committee at all. Prior to this week, the Wildcats were not ranked in the top 25 poll. They beat Oregon up in Eugene and they go from not ranked to number ten? The biggest leap for any division one program in long time. Seeing how the offense fluttered against the Trojans I am convinced that the Wildcats are not a top ten program. The Cats may be a top 20 or top 25 program, but not top ten. There was no tempo to their offense, they were letting the Trojans run and throw the ball all over field. Even still, they did have a chance to win at the end. However, if you are a top ten team, a team like USC should not have a chance to win against you. Especially with all the inexperience and youth that the Trojans have.
Three, the demise of the Ducks has been greatly exaggerated. With their loss against Arizona many pundits believed that Oregon was out of the discussion for the playoff. After yesterday, they have put themselves into the discussion, maybe not the actual playoff, but at least in the conversation, so we don't have four teams from the SEC Conference in the playoff. Marcus Mariota also put himself near the top of the Heisman Trophy talk as well. How people took him out of the Heisman talk just because of one game is beyond me. To me, he's a top three NFL pick. He lead his team to a crushing of Bruin hopes yesterday in the Rose Bowl and in front of a national audience. I'm sure it made an impression to Heisman voters, if it didn't, those voters are idiots.
In the end, the Pac-12 is doing what it always does every year. They eat their own in terms of not having a dominate team. Having as much parity as the Pac-12 has is a double edged sword for the conference because having a lot of talented teams in the league shows strength in the conference, but having so much strength gives any team a pretty good chance of beating anybody in any given week. Which means a great team out of the Pac-12 may very well have two losses. That's not a good thing when you are trying to get into a college football playoff and prove your conference is a great one. The committee will probably not have a team in the playoff that has two losses, so this intra-conference cannibalism will not work out in the end for the Pac-12 more than likely. We, as a conference need a team coming out of play with only one loss, so the league gets a team in the playoff. The Pac-12 is a great conference and needs a shot at the title.
Lets see how this plays out. It's going to be fun to watch... hold onto your hats fans!
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