One of the funny things about the College Football Playoff is that while in theory, it’s about selecting the best teams, the way the college football season is structured, the real most important thing is not having a league that cannibalizes itself. It’s why the sneaky impotence of the middle of the SEC has been so valuable to the SEC.
That said, the Pac-12 hasn’t had a great team in a while. That also said, if Stanford hadn’t played Northwestern in 2015 at 9:00 AM Pacific Time, we might speak wholly differently about the Pac-12. So, here are the paths for the league’s best teams, using Bill Connelly’s SP+ to identify said best teams:
Oregon
The big ones. We’ve been hearing a lot about the job Mario Cristobal’s doing at Oregon, but it’s yet to translate into a breakthrough season. With the team playing at Ohio State in their second game, it’s hard to envision this being the year unless they go undefeated in conference play. Even that could theoretically not be enough.
Although…
Beat Ohio State, and Oregon has their cushion. Hell, beat Ohio State and Oregon might get the 1-seed.
Washington
Washington also has a second-week road game against a traditional Big Ten power. Thankfully for Washington, it’s against Michigan.
Now, this shouldn’t be easy. SP+ has Michigan in the top 25. But this is the kind of win that might give Washington the bona fides to live through a loss somewhere else on the schedule, or at least give them a good chance of surviving such misfortune. Given that they don’t have to play anyone on this list on the road, they might have the best chance of anybody in the league to make it happen.
USC
USC has to play at Notre Dame this year, but they’ll play them after a bye week and Notre Dame is expected to be in between contention, speaking broadly. They finish the regular season hosting BYU, which might turn out to be the bigger concern, but it’s worth noting that BYU is not expected at all to be the team they were last fall.
Arizona State
ASU also plays BYU, and has to do it on the road in September, which makes it a big question mark. They also play the next two teams on this list on the road, in addition to visiting Seattle in November a week after hosting USC. If ASU goes undefeated, sure, they’ll be in the mix. But overall, this schedule looks simultaneously dangerous and unimpressive, which is the worst combination for a playoff hopeful.
Utah
Utah also plays at BYU, and it’s in September, and they follow that up with a trip to San Diego State and precede it with a visit from good FCS team Weber State, which all goes to say that this is that Arizona State dangerous/unimpressive schedule but on steroids.
To clear my name: I don’t know how good San Diego State’s expected to be. All I know is that they’ve had some great defenses in recent memory and some terrible offenses, so even if the Utes win the state championship, they might be in trouble come Week 3.
Utah plays USC in LA and hosts Oregon, which isn’t a terrible draw.
UCLA
And now, for my favorite potential Pac-12 playoff bid receiver.
Just kidding. Washington’s still got the best path, and Oregon’s still the best team.
UCLA does host LSU in Week 1 (Week 2? I don’t know what the deal is with Week Zero this year), and they do play at Washington, and they host Oregon, so they’ve got the meat on the schedule. But again, with this being the Pac-12, and with Stanford’s 2015 loss in Evanston still possibly changing history, UCLA probably needs to go 12-1.
***
In sum:
Teams that will make it if they go 12-1: Oregon (probably).
Teams that might make it if they go 12-1: Washington. USC. UCLA.
Teams that will need some help if they go 12-1: Arizona State. Utah.
Teams that might go 13-0: Washington. Oregon I guess. I don’t know. I have a hard time believing in that trip to Columbus. But hey—start of college football season’s weird sometimes, right? And I guess they can’t be that big of underdogs if Connelly has them 5th to Ohio State’s 4th.
