If you saw the latest edition of the US LBM Coaches Poll, you know that the Week 4 slate in Pac-12 football will be special.
Three games in the conference this coming weekend involve two ranked teams.
No. 19 Colorado visits No. 11 Oregon.
No. 25 UCLA goes to Salt Lake City to face No. 10 Utah.
No. 15 Oregon State plays No. 24 Washington State.
It’s a special weekend of football for a conference which just went 29-5 in nonconference games in the first three weeks of the season.
The Pac-12 hasn’t reached the College Football Playoff since 2016. It needs its best teams to do well, and its middle-tier teams to do reasonably well … but not to the point that they knock the title contenders out of the playoff.
A best-case scenario for the league this weekend would be Oregon, Utah, and Oregon State winning well-played and competitive games. If the games aren’t close, the league still needs those three teams to win. They all have a better shot of competing for a playoff berth than the opponents they face in Week 4.
Catch all of Ducks Wire’s Pac-12 team previews for the 2023 season:
Arizona — Arizona State — California — Colorado — Oregon State — Stanford — UCLA — USC — Utah — Washington — Washington State