By: Luke Brumm
If you had never watched college football and took a look at the current AP top twenty-five, you would probably think the Pac-12 was a top-two conference. You definitely wouldn’t think that every single team except for two would be leaving after this season. Well, as we all know, that is exactly what’s happening. As of now, only Oregon State and Washington State will remain in the conference next year.
The Pac-12 currently has six ranked teams with four coming within in the top ten. They had as many as eight ranked at one point this season. Washington is ranked seventh, USC is eighth, Oregon sits at nine, and Utah is tenth. Washington State is sixteenth and Oregon State ranks nineteenth. It’s ironic to see a conference that is so good and competitive this season go away.
The biggest part of the conference’s success has been the quarterback play. There are four Heisman hopefuls in the Pac-12: USC’s Caleb Williams, Washington’s Michael Penix Jr., Oregon’s Bo Nix, and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders. I know Sanders had a bad game last week, but I expect him to come back strong.
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After that, you have two transfers who were looking to improve their careers, and they seem to have done that. Washington State QB Cameron Ward, in his second year after transferring from Incarnate Word, has really turned it on. Meanwhile, Oregon State landed Clemson transfer, DJ Uiagelelei, and he has shown a lot of improvement. Neither team would be as good without their transfer QBs.
From there you have the two true freshman starters Dante Moore and Jaden Rashada. Both were highly touted, decommitted, and landed in the Pac-12. Moore is at UCLA while Rashada is at Arizona State. Both are uber talented and I expect successful college careers from both of them.
You also can’t forget about Cam Rising at Utah and Arizona’s Jayden De Laura. Rising is still waiting to come back from his injury last season, but we all know what he is capable of. De Laura, the former Washington State Cougar, is very underrated and has the Wildcats at 3-1 this season.
As you can see, the Pac-12 is a very good conference with great quarterbacks, and it’s ironic to see it fall apart as they have over the past year. It is also sad. Regionality in college football is dead, and it has everything to do with money. I’m not going to sit here and complain because that won’t change anything, but it is definitely unfortunate.
