USC Rises, UCLA Falls in Week 7 Pac 12 Power Rankings
So let’s all acknowledge one thing about this conference: nobody wants to be on top. Seriously, the minute you start to hype somebody up as the potential best team in the conference is the exact same minute that team loses.
And then once you ignore them, they decide to start winning again. This is still a deep conference, but you have to question the mental toughness of all the teams. They’re capable of beating anybody, yet the don’t seem capable of staying on top when there are expectations. That makes it very hard to distinguish among the teams in these power rankings.
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Nobody is undefeated in the conference anymore, and the curse was obviously being ranked at the top. We had Stanford at the top, they lost. We had USC in consideration for the top, they lost. Washington had a case, they lost. Oregon and UCLA became the clear Top 2, they lost. Arizona moved to the top, they lost.
And by the way, with Stanford and USC losing early, they had a chance to get back to the top. But they both made sure to lose again to avoid that happening.
This is the predicament we are faced with when putting together these Pac 12 Power Rankings. It’s extremely hard to separate these teams because they all keep losing to each other. It’s a testament to how good the conference is, but it’s also a condemnation of the conference because nobody can deny that any team getting close to No. 1 in the conference loses.
Yet still, here we are, putting together our Pac 12 Power Rankings. So here they are for Week 7 of the college football season, and know that whomever we put at the top will probably lose on purpose just to spite us.