Written by Bart Doan at Bloguin
Deep into Saturday night, Utah lost to Arizona when Arizona couldn’t throw the ball forward other than for one play in overtime. It was preceded by an equal parts stunning and bitter loss for Stanford at home to Oregon … a team the Cardinal tortured when the stakes were switched and one was the hunter and the other the hunted.
Stanford knocked Oregon out of the national championship game in 2012. Saturday night, Oregon returned the favor, pushing the Trees out of the College Football Playoff.
On a macro level, it means the Pac-12 is DOA when it comes to the CFB Playoff, which adds serious clarity to the race. The ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, SEC, and Notre Dame can exhale, knowing that the champ of one of the bloodiest conferences is not going to make the final four.
But wait … is that what we want?
Most with a trained or even untrained eye would admit the Pac-12 has risen to, if not the best conference top to bottom, the second best in the country. The overwhelming depth of it makes it, in a top-to-bottom context, as good as it gets.
So where are we at with this playoff thing if the Pac-12 team doesn’t make it? Are we bothered by a really good conference, maybe the best, having its champ squeezed out?
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