Three major conferences down, only 1-3 to go (by that I mean that I'm not sure that I'm going to do a Big Ten preview because you probably know enough about the B1G, and I'm not sure that the Big East is a major conference anymore). Anyway, today let's take a look at the Pac 12 North: Cal, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, Washington, and Washington State. The division is exceptionally strong, and 2012 figures to be an exciting year for this group of teams.
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| Washington QB Keith Price might just be my favorite current college football player not wearing a winged helmet. |
As a denizen of the East Coast time zone, I, like most of you, have probably seen the least of the Pac 12 conference compared to the other major conferences. However, one team that everyone is familiar with is, of course, the Oregon Ducks, the class of the conference in recent years.
In 2011, the Ducks had another wildly successful season, going 12-2 with a conference championship game thumping of UCLA, who at 6-6 deserved to be there about as much as much as anybody deserves to be strapped to a chair with their eyelids taped open with a First Take marathon playing on TV (hint: nobody deserves that). The Ducks then went on to outpace the Badgers in the Rose Bowl, faring much better than they did against Ohio State in the 2010 Rose Bowl game.
It wasn't all good, however. The Ducks probably preemptively shot themselves in the foot by scheduling LSU for the opener, a game in which Oregon outgained LSU 335 to 273 but turned it over four times, including one fumble that was returned three yards for a TD by Tyrann Mathieu. It was reminiscent of those games during the Rich Rod era when Michigan would move the ball relatively well but would intermittently shoot themselves in the foot, leading to a nice shiny yardage total but less points on the boards than one would hope for under the circumstances. LSU was clearly better, but it was a bitter 40-27 loss for the Ducks, another scalp for the SEC and another knock against the Oregon offense's efficacy against elite defenses.
Luckily, Oregon then went on cruise control, setting its Death Star of an offense's sights on everybody, including Stanford, whom they beat 53-30 at Stanford. However, hours after Michigan had handled the Huskers, Oregon then lost to USC at home by 3 after kicker Alejandro Maldonado missed a 37-yarder to tie it as the clock ran out. At that point, Oregon's hopes of making a second trip to the national title game in as many years were summarily quashed. It is quite possible that Oregon's 2011 team was actually better than its 2010 iteration, but, unfortunately for Chip Kelly, his first loss at Autzen Stadium came at the worst possible time.
The rest of the division wasn't even in the same stratosphere as Oregon. Starting from the bottom, Washington State and Oregon State went 4-8 and 3-9 respectively. The Cougars have been wandering in the wasteland ever since Mike Price's departure in 2002. After winning 10 in 2003, the Cougs have gone on to win 3.6 games per season since, and last year's 4-8 mark led to the firing of head coach Paul Wulff. Enter Mike Leach, who had been doing his own wandering in the last few years, and now there is hope again in Pullman.
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