The first Bowl Championship Series rankings were released Sunday, with the Texas Longhorns a solid No. 1 after their beat-down of the Missouri Tigers Saturday, followed by Alabama, Penn State and Oklahoma.
The Pacific-10 Conference is represented by Southern California at No. 5 and – no surprise here – nobody else.
The top-10 breaks down as follows: four Big-12 teams (Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech), three SEC teams (Alabama, Georgia, Florida) two Big-10 teams (Penn State and Ohio State), and lonely USC from the Pac-10.
Fitting, I suppose, as the Big-12 seems to be head-and-shoulders above the rest of the country, especially at quarterback. The SEC? Well, national prominence is a birthright there, right?
It is deserved, to an extent. I’m not sure if I’d put the Pac-10’s top-five up against the Big-12 or SEC top-five this season. The Big-10, however, deserves little to no respect in my opinion, and plays not only the most boring football in the country, but the poorest as well.
I wonder if the Pac-10 is really as “down” as everyone seems to think, though. With the exception of the Washington schools, I think the rest of the league is pretty even and the conference title race bears that out.
With Arizona’s upset of California on Saturday, there is now a five-way tie atop the conference, with Oregon, Oregon State, California, USC and Arizona all at one conference loss. The tie-breaker situation could be interesting down the road, but with the way this season has gone so far, I think we’ll wait a few weeks to start breaking those down.
There is a trio of two-loss teams following that in Stanford, UCLA and Arizona State. All three have shown they are capable of beating anyone in the conference if they play up to
their potential.
Of course, if this was the situation in the Big-12 or the SEC, it would just demonstrate the depth of quality teams in the conference. For the Pac-10 it’s a
down year.
So what does all this mean? To me it means that we need to stop caring about the national rankings and media buzz and get down to what really matters: the Pac-10 Conference championship. All the computer-system prognostications go away, the national media’s East Coast bias fades from the foreground, and we get to decide who goes to the BCS on the football field, the way it should be decided.
Because no matter how little respect the conference gets nationally this season, the conference champion gets the Rose Bowl, period. The fight for that spot, given the parity in the conference this year, should be epic.
And Oregon isn’t in horrible shape. The Ducks will still face three of those four teams they are tied with in the standings, and if USC wins out, the Rose bowl berth might still be up for grabs, as the BCS computers and most of the voters seem to love the Trojans.
If the Ducks can get to 10-2 and this scenario plays out, with their only losses to USC and Boise State (No. 12 in the BCS presently), they would make an attractive Rose Bowl team as the Pac-10
No. 2.
So while the Ducks may not control their own destiny in the purest sense of the phrase, their season still has the promise of a possible national stage should they take care of business. My feeling going into the second half of the season is that the next two weeks will make or break the
Ducks’ season.
If Oregon can beat Arizona State and Cal on the road, we get to see an intense final homestand (Stanford and Arizona) before going into Civil War. This could conceivably be the game for the conference title. That’s my ultimate scenario every season: the Ducks and Beavers for the Roses. I am green and yellow through and through, a second generation Duck, but don’t subscribe to rooting against the Beavers
every week.
After all, what fun is it to pile on a team that is already down? I’d much rather see the Ducks go into Reser Stadium, (the Bean-Dip Barn, Burrito Bowl, Salsa Stadium, Avacado-Dip Dome, etc.) and rip a BCS game from the Beavers, rather than win a game merely for state bragging rights, however sweet those might be.
[email protected]