Pac-12 Undefeated Bowl Record Not Legitimate

You may have heard in the past week a few analysts propping up the Pac-12 due to their record in bowl games so far. A certain analyst went as far as to say that it’s proof the Pac-12 is the best conference, especially since they’re favored for the rest of their bowl games.

We’ll ignore for a moment that the SEC has the same record in bowl games to this point.

There’s a pretty solid reason the Pac-12 is undefeated. It has had by far the easiest stretch to this point in bowl games.

Utah started it off by blowing out Colorado State. Want a cookie? The Rams were in a lame-duck bowl game since their coach, Jim McElwain, left to take the job at Florida. And this team wasn’t good anyway. It would have a losing record if it had played a legitimate Power Five conference schedule.

Then, Arizona State held on to beat Duke 36-31. It’s worth noting that the game was played in El Paso, which made it a home game for them, and Duke is obviously a very well-coached team that doesn’t have lots of talent. As long as you don’t make 1,000 mistakes, you can beat them.

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The final match-up so far has been Nebraska-USC. USC won 45-42. But once again, Nebraska was facing a lame-duck situation in which Bo Pelini had been fired and its new coach, Mike Riley, had not taken over yet. Oh, and let’s not forget that the game was played with half the players on Nebraska still bitter that Pelini was fired, and it was in San Diego, which made it another de facto home game for USC.

So the Pac-12’s three wins have come against two lame-duck teams and Duke. Are we seriously supposed to crown them now because of that? Who cares if they’re favored in the rest of the bowl games? They actually have to prove it on the field.

Oregon has no business being favored by 9 over Florida State anyway.

Yes, the Pac-12 still has a chance to show how great it is. It got an amazing draw this year, including the games coming up. Stanford-Maryland is a mismatch that heavily favors Stanford, Arizona made it to a New Year’s Six Bowl and got to be the team that draws the non-Power Five team, Boise State.

In fact, the only three Pac-12 games that are on legitimate playing field are Oregon-Florida State, Kansas State-UCLA, and Oklahoma State-Washington. If the Pac-12 comes away with wins in all three of those games, then we can start talking about them as a legitimate conference.

Until then, there is no reason to prop the teams out west up just because they got to play a bunch of mediocre teams in bowl games to this point.

Next: Clemson Destroys Oklahoma; Bob Stoops's Worst Loss

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