The Pac-12 won’t exist next year. It’s a real shame, because Pac-12 football is kicking butt right now. The Pac-12 is the only unbeaten Power Five conference in college football after Week 1. More than that, its teams regularly thrashed opponents. Colorado beat TCU by only three points, but as a 20-point underdog. Other Pac-12 teams won big in games which were expected to be close. It’s not just the winning, but the emphatic nature of the victories, which has affirmed the Pac-12 as a strong conference in the early part of the season.
This league was expected to be good … and that might have been an underestimation of its quality. This conference has a chance to be legitimately great. Think about the Heisman Trophy candidates in this conference. Think about how difficult it will be for any team, including USC, to go through this conference unbeaten. The obvious concern is that the Pac-12 will be so tough that the conference champion will have two losses and thereby miss the playoff. We will just have to wait and see.
Let’s rank all of the Pac-12 teams after their wins in Week 1: