Tag: pac-12 football

NFL combine representation for Pac-12 schools in the conference’s final season

The last Pac-12 football season produced a lot of NFL combine invitations for University of Washington players.

The list of attendees for the 2024 NFL scouting combine has been revealed. We are all compiling the names and numbers and have arrived at the totals for schools and conferences. It is a natural point of interest to wonder how many players from the Pac-12 are attending the combine. This was the last season of Pac-12 Conference football, after all. How did each of the Pac-12’s football schools stack up in terms of sending players to the combine?

You do not have to linger in uncertainty any longer. The stats and the comparisons are here, and we can discuss how much these numbers might mean.

Without further ado, here is the leaderboard for Pac-12 NFL combine invitees, starting with the schools at the bottom and working to the top:

Every Pac-12 player invited to the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine

This year’s NFL Scouting Combine will feature plenty of familiar names

The full list of the 321 prospects invited to the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine was released on Tuesday, featuring 52 players from the Pac-12.

From Deion Sanders’ first team at Colorado, wide receiver Xavier Weaver was the only player who earned an invite. Weaver led the Buffs with 68 receptions and 908 yards on the season, plus four touchdowns.

The rest of the Pac-12, which was one of college football’s best conferences this past season, made up 16.2% of the combine’s invitees. The Pac-12 only trailed the SEC (75) and the Big Ten (60).

With USC’s Caleb Williams, Washington’s Micahel Penix Jr. and Oregon’s Bo Nix headlining the conference’s invitees, here’s a complete list of every player invited from each Pac-12 team:

Malachi Nelson, in 2024, will face three current Pac-12 schools

Malachi Nelson will play more Pac-12 schools at Boise State than he would have at USC in 2024.

The 2024 college football season will be especially notable for a lot of obvious reasons. One is the emergence of the new 12-team College Football Playoff. Another is the movement of various schools to new conferences. USC will be off to the Big Ten, along with three other current Pac-12 schools: UCLA, Washington, and Oregon.

In 2024, USC will face two of those three schools: Washington and UCLA. The Trojans will not face Oregon.

As a result, Malachi Nelson — who just transferred to Boise State from USC — will actually play more current Pac-12 schools this year as a member of the Broncos than he would have if he had stayed at USC and remained a Trojan.

Boise State’s 2024 schedule includes games against Oregon, Oregon State, and Washington State. Keep in mind that Washington State and Oregon State hammered out an agreement to play Mountain West schools in football for the coming year. They aren’t conference games, but this is a partnership between OSU and WSU — the so-called “Pac-2” — and the Mountain West.

It will be weird, and fascinating, for USC fans to see Malachi Nelson playing schools USC has commonly played for the past few decades, but which will no longer be part of USC’s conference, in 2024.

Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, and Ducks Wire.

Final 2023 Pac-12 football power rankings

Ahead of Monday’s national championship game, check out our final 2023 Pac-12 football power rankings

It’s only appropriate that the all-but-deceased Pac-12 will have a representative in the College Football Playoff National Championship game. While preseason favorite USC disappointed, the conference still enjoyed an impressive season that could culminate in Washington winning it all on Monday night.

The Pac-12 owned several of the country’s top quarterbacks, including Heisman Trophy finalists Bo Nix and Michael Penix Jr., and we also saw big years from defensive stars Laiatu Latu, Jonah Elliss and Travis Hunter. Eight of the conference’s 12 teams played in a bowl game, too.

Although Washington’s season isn’t over yet, we’ve seen more than enough to release our final 2023 Pac-12 football power rankings:

Final Pac-12 bowl season ends on a high note with Washington’s huge win

This was a memorable Pac-12 bowl finale before the national championship game next week.

The last Pac-12 bowl season has come and gone. New Year’s Day featured the Washington Huskies soaring in the College Football Playoff semifinals at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans against the Texas Longhorns. This was the eighth and final bowl game for 2023 Pac-12 football schools.

There were seven other Pac-12 bowls this season. UCLA, USC, Arizona, and Oregon won. Cal, Utah, and Oregon State lost. The one which really counted, though, was Washington-Texas. It marked the Pac-12’s first playoff game since the 2016 Peach Bowl in which the same Huskies lost to Nick Saban, Alabama, and a quarterback you might have heard of: Jalen Hurts.

The Pac-12 succeeded in its attempt to put a team in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game for the first time since the first season of the playoff’s existence. The 2014 college football season ended with Oregon facing Ohio State in the national championship game in January of 2015 in Arlington, Texas.

Oregon beating Liberty in the Fiesta Bowl was fully expected. Washington, though, was an underdog to Texas before a partisan Longhorn crowd in New Orleans. This is a final, glistening moment Pac-12 football fans will remember for a very long time … and maybe until the Pac-12 is potentially reborn in the mid-2030s.

We can only hope.

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Washington-Michigan is the last Pac-12 football game

This is it for the Pac-12. It’s the final act.

The Pac-12 Conference is one step closer to ending. Or, on the other hand, the Pac-12 Conference got one more week to live in college football after the Washington Huskies defeated the Texas Longhorns in the College Football Playoff semifinals.

The Huskies remain undefeated and will now face Michigan on January 8 in the national title game. Both teams are undefeated. This will officially be the final Pac-12 football game in the conference as we have known it.

Oregon State and Washington State are still there, but they are the only two teams left, and their scheduling alliance with the Mountain West essentially pegs them as MWC teams (although not officially).

So, in a fascinating turn of events, Kalen DeBoer and Washington will play the last Pac-12 game against Michigan with a national championship on the line.

If only George Kliavkoff and the Pac-12 CEO Group could have predicted this a few months ago, maybe the Pac-12 would continue to exist in 2024 and beyond. Alas, it won’t.

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Pac-12 wins first College Football Playoff semifinal in nine years

The Pac-12 won the first four-team playoff semifinal … and the last one.

The Pac-12 Conference waited nine years for this moment. The Pac-12 had not won a College Football Playoff semifinal since New Year’s Day of 2015, when the Oregon Ducks defeated the Florida State Seminoles in the 2015 Rose Bowl in Pasadena. The last Pac-12 team to even play in a College Football Playoff semifinal was Washington in the 2016 season. The Huskies lost the 2016 Peach Bowl semifinal to the Alabama Crimson Tide in Atlanta. No Pac-12 team made a playoff semifinal until Washington returned to the playoff in the 2024 Sugar Bowl semifinal game against the Texas Longhorns.

The Huskies were able to get the job done in a crazy 37-31 victory. The nine-year drought for the Pac-12 is over. A Pac-12 team will once again get a chance to compete for the national championship. This will be the Pac-12’s first national title game appearance since Oregon faced Ohio State in January of 2015.

There’s another wild detail to be found in here: The Pac-12 won the first four-team playoff semifinal in history. That Oregon-Florida State game was the first-ever College Football Playoff game. Washington-Texas was the 20th and last semifinal in the four-team playoff era, given that next year’s semifinals will be part of a 12-team playoff.

Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, and Ducks Wire.

Oregon wins its last football game as a Pac-12 school

The end of the Pac-12 is now official for Oregon football. The Ducks’ next game will be in the Big Ten.

The existence of Pac-12 football might technically have ended, due to Washington State and Oregon State officially being “Pac-12” members. In any meaningful sense, though, the history of Pac-12 football has been halted by the exodus of 10 schools to two other conferences. That history might be revived in several years, but for now, the road is hitting a dead end.

The Oregon Ducks are part of that story. They played their last Pac-12 football game (at least for now) on Monday in the Fiesta Bowl. They defeated Liberty, 45-6.

Ducks Wire wrote:

“Bo Nix was as efficient as ever as he methodically led the Ducks to six touchdown drives, including four touchdown passes in the second quarter alone.

“Tez Johnson continued his tremendous second half of the season with 11 catches and a touchdown. Oregon fans can only hope he returns to Eugene for one more season.

“Liberty came into the Fiesta Bowl averaging over 300 yards rushing a game, but against the Ducks, the Flames gained just 168 yards on the ground.”

Next stop for Oregon: the Big Ten, as is the case with USC.

Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, and Ducks Wire.

USC quarterbacks in bowl games in recent years

Miller Moss tied Caleb Williams’ program record for touchdown passes in a game on Wednesday night. Who else has lit up the field in a bowl game for the Trojans?

Few schools in the country can match USC‘s reputation for producing quarterbacks. Three Trojans quarterbacks have won the Heisman Trophy since the turn of the century, including Caleb Williams just last season. There isn’t a bigger stage for these quarterbacks than the collegiate postseason, with a trophy on the line and the entire nation watching during the holidays.

The Trojans dominated college football at the start of the 2000s with Pete Carroll in charge and Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart under center. The team won at least 11 games in seven consecutive seasons from 2002-2008, winning a pair of national championships and reaching the top of the college football rankings in five different seasons.

Since Carroll’s departure in 2009, USC has still put together five 10-win seasons, still impressive for the average program. However, the time between Carroll and Lincoln Riley tends to be brushed aside for the All-Americans who came before and after, especially at the quarterback position. In the spirit of Miller Moss’s six-touchdown performance in the Holiday Bowl on Wednesday, here’s a trip down memory lane for USC’s bowl quarterbacks since 2010.

Here’s where Oregon State and Washington State are headed as the Pac-12 legal battle ends

Oregon State and Washington State’s legal tug-of-war with the Pac-12 finally ends. Here’s what happened.

The Pac-12 legal tussle with Oregon State and Washington State ends amicably and comes with a West Coast Conference twist.

Per David Rumsey and Amanda Christovich of Front Office Sports, Oregon State and Washington State plan to settle a lawsuit from September with the 10 schools departing the Pac-12 in 2024.

Details are still being finalized, but the departing schools are expected to forfeit a portion of their conference revenue for the remainder of the 2023-24 season. These institutions will still have a say in revenue decisions until they exit, but OSU and WSU maintain control of the conference’s future.

The two remaining universities have also devised plans to keep their athletic programs afloat after the changes. Both schools will play football against the Mountain West Conference in 2024 and will be affiliate members in 12 sports as part of the West Coast Conference for two seasons.

Here’s how Twitter reacted to the news: