More Wildness of the Wild Wild Pac-12 South

So, somehow Utah inexplibily lost to 2-10 Colorado at home on Friday night, handing the Pac-12 South title to a 6-5 UCLA team who didn’t even have to play their toughest in-division competition of the season at USC to get there. How embarrassing to the conference that a team who will probably be .500 will be playing for the Pac-12 title, yet an 11-1 Stanford team will not!

These are the risks of having divisions, as I pointed out earlier in the year. I wrote about this way back near the beginning of the season when I discussed the happenings of the Big 12 championship game of 2008 when three Big 12 teams finished the season 11-1 and Oklahoma was given the slot in the title game to play an 8-4 Missouri team due to their BCS standing. But, these rediculuous results will make that seem completely ordinary.

The Pac-12 needs to seriously think through a mechanism by which two teams from the same division could meet in the title game if their records are so far apart from each other.  I mean, if the divisions were not crossing over for 4 games, that would be one thing. But, in essence the two divisions are playing very similar schedules. Clearly Stanford and Oregon are the two best eligible teams and USC is the best in the South.

The Pac-12 needs to think seriously about whether they should even have divisions. There have been issues in the SEC over the years with divisions resulting in an uneven championship game as well. It is just too easy to have the two best teams in a conference on the same side of a division. You can still have the 9 game conference season and just have the two best teams play each other.

But, no, instead we get frickin’ UCLA in the title game! The harsh irony of the deal is that UCLA will be 6-6 in that game, but after they lose to Oregon, they will drop to 6-7 on the season. Most peole think UCLA will then be ineligible to go to the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl as they so hoped to do. But, some loop-hole will come out, such as since they earned 6 wins against FBS teams, they remain eligible. Let it be known, the first ever team with a losing record in Pac 8/10/12 history will go bowling. Hope they enjoy that trip to sunny Albuquerque.

But, should they somehow, against the odds, knock off Oregon in the title game in Eugene following a mass suspension of 20 Duck players in a massive VCR theft operation, then a 7-6 Bruin team will be in the Rose Bowl? Then, I will know the world has gone haywire.