The season is young. USC and Stanford are the only teams which have played a Pac-12 Conference game. The rest of the league joins the fun in Week 4 with a loaded slate featuring Colorado-Oregon, UCLA-Utah, and Oregon State-Washington State. Rankings questions don’t mean much right now, and they shouldn’t.
Just for fun, though: Which team would you rank higher — USC or Washington? We asked our Pac-12 football panel:
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Don Smalley, Ducks Wire: USC. To be the man, you’ve got to beat the man. But the Huskies have looked great so far. It hurts me to say that!
Zachary Neel, Ducks Wire: That’s a great question. I think I would keep USC ahead of UW at the moment, but not by much. Washington has played the “better” teams so far this year, but when you consider the distractions that surrounded that Michigan State game on the Spartans’ side of things, I don’t know that it looks as good as it could have. Call them 1A and 1B right now.
Matt Wadleigh, Trojans and Buffaloes Wire: Flip a coin. Neither one of them has really played anybody noteworthy yet, and we haven’t even seen Caleb Williams play in the second half through three games. But, to answer it straight up, I’d have USC higher by one or two spots.
Matt Zemek, Trojans Wire: Washington. The Huskies have played slightly better teams than USC has. Michigan State is better than Stanford. Boise State is better than Nevada. Based on actual results — not the eye test — UW is better through three games.
Catch all of 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