While past seasons have seen the Pac-12 conference act as a punching bag for the college football world at large, usually sitting as the worst of the Power 5 conferences and failing to get out of its own way long enough to compete for anything at the highest level, 2022 has been different.
At the moment, four Pac-12 teams are ranked inside the top 25, with No. 6 USC, No. 11 UCLA, No. 12 Oregon, and No. 20 Utah leading the way. Earlier in the year, Washington was ranked as high as No. 15 before dropping a pair of games, and teams like Washington State and Oregon State have been just on the outside of the rankings looking in over the past few weeks.
It’s still early, to be fair, but the Pac-12 does indeed look to be having a breakout season that was sorely needed after all of the conference realignment talks that preluded the season.
During Oregon’s advantageous bye week ahead of the showdown with UCLA next week, we’ve spent some time taking stock of the season and assessing how we got here. Part of that was a midseason check-in with Matt Zemek at Trojans Wire, while also getting a sense of where Oregon fans should turn their attention this weekend.
Now we want to look at the Pac-12 as a whole and see if we can sum up their 2022 season using just one word. Here’s our best attempt: