No matter who you play or when you play them, there’s one constant every year when the Pac-12 football schedule is announced: Fans will complain about how tough a draw they ended up getting.
A team could play all 12 games at home and the fans would still find a way to complain about the order in which the games are played. This annual bellyaching took place on Wednesday. The Pac-12 released the full schedules, giving us the blueprint for one of the most anticipated seasons in recent memor, and a year that will undoubtedly be entertaining.
So are the complaints warranted? USC gets a cushy bye in Week 13 before the Pac-12 Championship game, but do they still have enough reason to think that George Kliavkoff gave them a raw end of the deal? What about Oregon, or Washington? Do tough stretches of games in October and November rise to the level of unfairness?
In a minute, you’ll see that the answer is no, and simply that with the Pac-12 as strong as it is expected to be in 2023, every team has a tough schedule.
We wanted to go through, game by game, and rank everything, though, taking a look at which teams have it the worst, and which teams have no business complaining about their outlook at all. Here are the 2023 Pac-12 schedule rankings, from easiest, to most difficult.