The Pac-12 has two paths to a College Football Playoff berth on the line Saturday, but neither looks easy.
First, the consensus choice: No. 12 Oregon (5-1) already has a two-game lead in the North division and can make a case for the Playoff if it wins the rest of its games. That means the Ducks must defeat No. 25 Washington in Seattle on Saturday. Road trips to Los Angeles (USC) and Tempe (Arizona State) are the biggest obstacles if the Ducks defeat the Huskies.
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Winning these games is not an outlandish possibility, but the Ducks’ schedule has been unimpressive since the season-opening loss to Auburn. So much so that skeptics remain uncertain of how much respect Oregon deserves at this point.
Oregon has defeated Nevada, Montana, Stanford, California and Colorado at the halfway point. The best victory (Cal) looks respectable, except the Golden Bears supplied little offense with a backup quarterback.
So would anyone really be surprised if Oregon loses another game as soon as Saturday?
But if Oregon going 12-1 seems implausible, at least Pac-12 supporters know the Ducks are the only North team with a chance for national relevance.
It’s crazier in the Pac-12 South, where the winner of Saturday’s game between No. 13 Utah (5-1) and No. 17 Arizona State (5-1) will be the only remaining challenger to the Ducks for any chance to make the Playoff.
With the game at Utah’s raucous Rice-Eccles Stadium, the Utes are the favorite. But Arizona State might provide more opposition than expected with dynamic freshman quarterback Jayden Daniels, who already beat Michigan State on the road.
Sun Devils coach Herm Edwards is winning admirers by the day, so maybe Arizona State can rise above its image as the team that loses as soon as you expect it to become a winner.
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A cynic would say neither Utah nor Arizona State belongs in any CFP conversation and the Pac-12 should just be glad it is still considered a Power 5 conference.
But it would be interesting to at least ponder the Playoff committee figuring what to do with a 12-1 Utah or 12-1 Arizona State team in December, especially if any of the other Power 5 conferences present a one-loss champion. The ideal scenario for the Pac-12's Playoff chances might be those teams facing off with 11-1 records in the conference championship game.
But the Pac-12’s reputation is so bad, there’s no guarantee it would get into the playoff even in that scenario. Especially when committee members might not even be able to watch Saturday’s Arizona State-Utah game. It will be on the Pac-12 Network, which means only 17 million homes — 20 percent of ESPN2’s audience — gets to see it. Blame the Pac-12. It selected the game for its minnow network when it could have allowed ESPN or FOX to televise it.
Utah might be 6-1 after this weekend, with four of its seven games on the Pac-12 Network. The Utes literally might be the best team nobody’s seen yet. And the one game where they drew a national audience, they laid an egg against USC on ESPN.
Typical of life in the Pac-12.