The Most Underrated Thing Was …
Utah 35, Arizona State 21
Help them, Oregon, you’re the Pac-12’s only hope.
I had Utah as my preseason pick to win the Pac-12 South – I’m not puffing my chest out considering I was 51% on Utah and 49% on USC, and it still might be ASU – but Arizona State was the hot call from a whole lot of very smart Pac-12 people.
The Sun Devils were humming, getting past the loss to BYU with terrific, emphatic wins over UCLA and Stanford as they looked like the star of the Pac-12 South.
The dream and goal for the league was to have an 11-1 Oregon vs. an 11-1 Arizona State for the Pac-12 title, with the winner almost assured a spot in the College Football Playoff. Now that’s gone, all while Oregon is doing everything it possibly can to lose football games without actually doing it.
The ASU loss was another big piece in the overall puzzle. Cincinnati needed that. A second SEC team needed that. Notre Dame needed that. The ACC needed that if there’s hope for a one-loss NC State or even an unbeaten Wake Forest to get there.
Oregon is still good enough and talented enough to win out, but it’s certainly shaky. The Pac-12 needed another star, and it needed the national buzz to grow. It just lost that.
– The Us, PJ Fleck: Winners & Losers
– Tennessee debacle: One Really Big Thing
– Iowa’s loss: Most Overrated Thing
– A deep breath What It All Means, Week 7