I hate headlines.
The answer to the titular question is “No.” The Pac-12 does not need this. But let’s talk through how bad they want it, alongside every other playoff-meaningful Week 2 game:
The Most Impactful Game: Oregon @ Ohio State
This is arguably bigger for Oregon than it is for the Pac-12. Sure, the Pac-12 wants to see its best program get the win, especially a week after one of its other best programs lost to an FCS school at home. (A fun one, though!) But really, for Oregon this is more about whether the Ducks can break into that tier of playoff-assumed teams.
They would’ve been a natural fit, and had the playoff come around a few years earlier, they might have become a natural fit. Ohio State. Clemson. Oklahoma. Alabama. Oregon. Those could have been the five-school rotation. Instead, it’s four. Oregon got caught in the desert. And as anyone in the Torah could tell you, it’s hard to get out of the desert.
Oregon made the first College Football Playoff. They won a game! The Oregon Ducks played for the first national championship in the College Football Playoff era.
The seeds were planted for Oregon to get back there. But then they went to East Lansing the next September, and, well, after that the flaws were too much to hide.
There’s a thing about college football in which single games can be historically important. In a sport with clear divisions of power, there are games upon which history turns.
I don’t know if Oregon @ Michigan State was one of those games. But it was a big one.
Two losses over the next four weeks later, Oregon was out of the hunt, and when they went 4-8 the next year before entering the who’s-our-head-coach spiral, with Willie Taggart lasting just a single season, the Ducks looked up from their 2018 Redbox Bowl victory to find themselves just .500 over the last four years of Pac-12 play. 2019 was better—had Oregon just not lost to Arizona State, they might have earned the right to get pounded by Joe Burrow in the Peach Bowl—but nobody remembers that Arizona State game the way we remember Oklahoma’s many near-playoff-excluding debacles. Or at least, I don’t. Oregon could be the Sooners—a consistent threat, a consistent playoff appearer, a consistent breakthrough waiting to happen. Instead, they’re Florida State. They were good in recent memory, but in the playoff era? Not a factor.
There are a lot of questions about how indicative last season’s results are of this season’s teams in quality, and this is especially hard to gauge in the Pac-12, where there at least seem to have been an abundance of one-score games. The Ducks were 4-2 in conference play. Two of their victories came by one score. Two of their losses came by one score. The losses were bad, but on the road. The wins were respectable, but one was at home and the other was a bizarro conference championship game in which Covid was as big a factor in who played as the standings were.
If last season’s results weren’t too indicative, and we treat this as a coming-off-2019 game, Oregon’s a program on the rebound, looking to break through, one that just missed the playoff the last time we had a real one and now plays a probably-excellent-but-also-inexperienced Ohio State team in a marquee game.
Either way, it’s huge.
If Oregon wins this, a game they’re roughly one-in-six likely to win (judging by the moneyline), everything spins on its head. The Ducks still aren’t all that likely to win out, but they can likely afford a loss as long as they win the Pac-12, and a team that can win in Columbus is almost sure to be the Pac-12 favorite, Fresno State struggles and all. If the Ducks win, they’re probably somewhere around 50% likely to win a conference in which there are significant doubts about all other obvious contenders (Washington lost to Montana, UCLA and USC are still in prove-it mode; shoutout to ESPN’s FPI, by the way, which is a good resource for conference championship probability, though we don’t endorse it for playoff probability), which means they’re probably about 45% likely to make the playoff. If they lose, they likely need to win out, something perhaps just 5% likely (somewhere in that order of magnitude), and then they might need a little help.
If Ohio State wins, things don’t change that much for the Buckeyes. That’s how it works when you’re a big favorite. Ohio State could also likely afford another loss in that scenario, putting their playoff probability somewhere around 65% (now’s probably a good time for the note that no, we don’t have the model done; yes, we’re still validating data). Possibly higher, but probably not (as a gut check of my estimates, in this hypothetical scenario I’d say the probabilities go, in order: Alabama 80%, Ohio State 65%, Oklahoma 60%, Clemson 55%, Georgia 40%, implying we’d get three of those five in the field in most scenarios, which isn’t outlandish). Not with potentially resurgent Penn State and Michigan in the East. Not with potentially advantageously-pathed-and-resurgent Iowa, who we’ll talk about next, in the West. If the Buckeyes lose, it’s not only a loss. It’s also an indicator they aren’t as good as we thought, just as it’ll mean the Ducks are better than we thought. That, combined with winning out becoming a likely necessity, would drop OSU to somewhere around 25% playoff-likely.
It’s a high-leverage game.
For the Pac-12, the difference between having Oregon at 5% and having Oregon at 45% is big, but it isn’t existential. The league’s going to need to break through more than once to change its status among the Power Five. That, or it’ll need to break through in a real big way, by winning a semifinal or maybe the national championship. This is a big game, but it’s one part of the equation. For Oregon, to go back to the Exodus metaphor, this is a Twelve Spies moment, a moment of truth in the attempted return to the promised land. For the Pac-12, USC or UCLA cracking the playoff field would likely accomplish the same result as Oregon making it, and those aren’t magnitudes more unlikely.
One last note: FOX putting this game at 9 AM PDT does not bode well for Oregon.
The Biggest Game: Iowa @ Iowa State
While Ohio State vs. Oregon has the most playoff leverage, there’s something massive going on in Ames. I’ll write about it in its own post in a little bit, so check back later today if that isn’t on the homepage yet when you read this, but it’s every bit as existential as Oregon’s game, but in a different way, and one in which each team has something big to gain. The short version is that Iowa’s trying to remain the king of the state while Iowa State tries to establish itself as legitimately “there,” not “getting there,” with the added threat of the mid-majordom looming in the background if ISU can’t get on a new plane of power as a program and the chips fall poorly these next few years for the Big 12.
As far as the playoff goes, this, again, likely isn’t massive. For Iowa, winning the Big Ten is likely a viable path either way, but that isn’t exceptionally likely, even after last week’s dominance of Indiana. If Iowa can’t beat Iowa State, it’s hard to see them winning out anyway. If Iowa does beat Iowa State, they probably get another free pass elsewhere but also…maybe not. Maybe Wisconsin will hold it together and Iowa will lose in Madison and 11-1 will get them nothing. There’s just too much pie left to bake for the Hawkeyes.
For Iowa State, the story is similar. If they can’t beat Iowa, they probably can’t win out anyway. If they do beat Iowa, the path is still laden with potentially having to go through Oklahoma twice, with a visit from Texas also on the docket and dangerous trips to places like Manhattan lurking here and there.
It’s not quite an elimination game, but it’s close, and on the other side, even the winner will likely be below 15% playoff-likely if not 10%.
The Contenders
Aside from Ohio State, none of the five main characters play likely-to-be-competitive games this week. Alabama’s tuneup’s against Mercer. Clemson’s is against South Carolina State. Oklahoma plays Western Carolina. Georgia plays UAB. Three FCS schools, one Conference USA school, likely nothing to see. If there’s anything to see, it’ll be massive, but likely nothing to see.
Four Fun Ones
Texas, Michigan, and Utah are all interesting in the way where there’s a path for them to win their conference (Michigan, of course, has the hardest of these paths). Texas A&M is interesting in that they’re potentially one of the six best teams in the country, with a home game against Alabama coming up. I guess you could add Washington to that first list. BYU’s always interesting.
Anyway, four games of note. Loser in each can be written off, winner in each can probably be written off too but maybe not:
Texas @ Arkansas
Is Texas as good as they looked last week? Can they handle playing in fired-up Fayetteville? Is Arkansas on the rise after beating three SEC teams last year? This might be the most fun game of the week, at least for an Iowa State fan (that game feels more torturous than fun at the moment) who’s currently assuming Ohio State/Oregon will get ugly towards the end. Lot of chaos potential here.
Washington @ Michigan
Each of these teams might be bad bad. But Michigan might be good, and Washington might turn into a nightmare for its own league if it turns out last week was just an enormous outlier. Under the radar, for sure.
Utah @ BYU
I mean, Utah won the Pac-12 South in 2018 and 2019. Probably not a team to write off in that mayhemic institution. And while BYU might be having a down year, that just heightens this game’s status as their Super Bowl.
Texas A&M @ Colorado
Potentially overhyped? Playing at altitude? This might be a dud, but it could also turn out to be a good one. There’s fall-on-their-face potential. Just like there was for UNC last week.
Others
Virginia Tech and USC host Middle Tennessee State and Stanford, respectively. I note those because they’re both reasonably likely to play in a conference championship game. In Sun Belt vs. The World action, Appalachian State goes to Miami and Coastal Carolina hosts Kansas, while Arkansas State welcomes Memphis to Jonesboro and Troy hosts Liberty. AP Top Ten teams Cincinnati and Notre Dame host Murray State and Toledo, respectively. There are other top 25 games. There are other teams in action who could make their conference championships. Listing them all would be less efficient than telling you to scroll through your ESPN app.
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Overall, there’s no clear main event like there was last weekend, but the Columbus-to-Ames-to-Fayetteville-to-Provo viewing schedule is a good one, with the option to flip from Fayetteville to Ann Arbor or Miami depending what’s happening during the gloaming. Another fun week ahead. Enjoy it.
