It’s late October, which means the Pac-12 is in deep trouble as far as the College Football Playoff is concerned. You can pretty much set your watch to it every year.
The Pac-12, as you know, has not made the College Football Playoff since 2016, when the Washington Huskies went to the semifinals and lost to Alabama. That drought, if we are being brutally honest, is likely to continue for another year now that UCLA — the last unbeaten team in the conference — lost a game.
The Pac-12 isn’t officially eliminated, however. Jon Wilner of the Wilner Hotline lays out the landscape for USC and the other contenders in the Pac-12. Here’s what he said in his Saturday Night Five reaction column after Week 8’s games: