The 2023 Pac-12 Conference was supposed to be good in football, but was it supposed to be this good? Was the Pac-12 supposed to go 20-3 in nonconference games through the first two weeks of the season? This was even better than the preseason predictions suggested, particularly in the case of Colorado, which has greatly transcended all preseason predictions in a few short weeks.
Just as a reference point, look at 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
Plenty of these previews were optimistic, but not all of them were. The Pac-12 certainly figured to have several nationally relevant programs in 2023, but the middle tier of the conference has proved to be better and tougher than a lot of prognosticators (including yours truly) expected.
I didn’t see this coming from Colorado. I also didn’t see Washington State beating Wisconsin.
Let’s talk about the Pac-12’s brilliant start to the new football season on the Trojans: Wired podcast. Ian Hest produced the show:
Check out our Pac-12 football predictions roundtable for the 2023 season.