We entered the 2023 college football season knowing that it would be the last for the Pac-12 Conference, a historic league that spanned for over a century and gave us some great memories during that time. We now leave the 2023 season with the Pac-12 being named as one of the biggest winners of the season, thanks to a fantastic year from some of the top teams out west.
The Washington Huskies area headed to the College Football Playoff after a perfect 13-0 season, while the Oregon Ducks and Arizona Wildcats finished the year as two of the top teams in the nation, going to highly respected bowl games. We also had schools like Colorado and USC making headlines for a number of reasons throughout the season, capturing national headlines throughout the year.
Because of all of this, CBS Sports named the Pac-12 as one of their biggest winners when taking stock of the season:
It’s a deep injustice that the Pac-12 is crumbling, but the conference gave us a swan song for the ages. The league championship was a legitimate CFP play-in game between Oregon and Washington. Four Pac-12 teams finished ranked in the CFP top 20, and four others had at least a stint in the polls. Arizona was one of the surprise teams in the sport, overcoming a bad loss against Mississippi State to finish in the top 15, a masterful performance from Jedd Fisch’s squad. Two of the four Heisman Trophy finalists hail from the conference. Colorado brought crazy attention in the first year of the Deion Sanders era, posting several of the most-watched games in the sport. This was not only the best year of Pac-12 football in quite some time, it was the must-watch conference in college football in 2023.
Going forward, the teams from the Pac-12 will go their separate ways, with Oregon, Washington, USC, and UCLA all headed to the Big Ten, while Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado join the Big 12, and California and Stanford head to the ACC.
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