So Arizona beat Oregon, the third time this year an undefeated #2-ranked Pac-10 national contender has been beaten by another Pac-10 team (USC beaten by Stanford, Cal beaten by Oregon State). Arizona has beaten top Pac-10 teams 4 years in a row, Oregon State has done it three years in a row, and UCLA has done it two years in a row.
Oregon didn't just lose this game tonight because they lost Dixon; Dixon was picked off and Arizona converted on that pick even before Dixon was injured. No, Oregon lost because Arizona is a good team. And it was the same with USC losing to Stanford and Cal losing to Oregon State; both USC and Cal were hurting, but they lost to opponents who played well and deserved their wins.
The common knock against the Pac-10 is that while its top tier teams are among the best in the country, it really drops off after the top three or four and doesn't have the same depth as the SEC. This is totally wrong; the Pac-10 is as deep as any conference in the country. There are two reasons why teams like Oregon State and Arizona haven't been ranked this season and why UCLA never crept back into the rankings. Reason one is that their records are not that good, but this is because every team in the Pac-10 plays every other team, and very few of them schedule out-of-conference patsies (unlike lots of other teams in the other top conferences). Reason two is that their names are not names like Arkansas, Alabama, Michigan, or Wisconsin. I mean, Arizona just beat #2 Oregon, the same Oregon that destroyed Michigan, but Michigan is ranked and, I can guarantee, you Arizona will not be.
There are no bad teams in the Pac-10. Washington, last in the conference, beat 22-ranked Boise State by 12; Stanford, second-to-last, beat USC and Arizona; and third-to-last Washington State barely lost to Arizona State and beat UCLA (which beat Cal) and Stanford (which beat USC). Every single team in the conference has at least one good, quality win; there are no Minnesotas, Baylors, Mississippis, or half-of-the-ACCs here.
One way to view Oregon's loss is as proof that the Pac-10 is not as good as expected, but the better way is as proof of just how deep it is. Unfortunately, this depth in relatively-anonymous teams has made it extremely hard for the top Pac-10 teams to make it to the title game. Unlike LSU, which lost to then-17th-ranked Kentucky but still made it back to #1, Arizona State has virtually no chance of getting back to the top even though its loss was to then-5th ranked Oregon.
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3 comments:
Not to argue with you in general, but I think that UCLA is not ranked because they lost to Notre Dame...and also Utah.
Michigan lost to a 1-AA team, worse by far than either Utah or, yes, Notre Dame. They followed that by getting completely destroyed at Oregon by 32 points. That was followed by a win over the worst team in 1-A, a close escape against a now-unranked Penn State, and nothing of note until they lost by 16 to unranked Wisconsin, a team that was 100% destroyed by Penn State. And all of this comes the year after getting tossed out of the Rose Bowl by USC so badly that not until the 4th quarter, when USC had its second string in, did Michigan finally get more than 3 points.
Michigan is ranked 21st! Hell, even Wisconsin is ranked! And yet Pac-10 teams like California, UCLA, Oregon State, and Arizona have no chance of being ranked the rest of this season.
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