I always forget how painfully slow football related news is this time of the year. Well good thing Fall Camp is roughly 120 hours from beginning, and once it does, you can expect the best daily coverage of our fledgling Cougars from Sir Vince Grippi and the folks over at Cougfan. I am sure you will find notes and thoughts over here about the developments during Fall Camp, but when you’re looking for up to the minute coverage, those two are the best around.
The last few weeks you have probably seen each of our contributor’s “Official Pac 12 Media Ballots” so today, like the official media poll for the conference, I am going to sum up this here blog’s Pac 12 picks. If only NCAAF had March Madness, it would be as great as the tournament going on. You can find march madness predictions at BetPhoenix.
Each team will receive a point for where they are in each of our collective standings, based on the pick, the lowest points will be your first place team in each division, your 6th place team being the squad with the most points. In parenthesis, you will see the total vote points they have as the first number, as well as a much smaller number which represents first place votes, if they had any, they received.
Without further ado, here is the accumulation of all our picks!
South
1) ASU (8, 2)
2) Arizona (12)
3) USC (13, 3)
4) Utah (16)
5) UCLA (26)
6) Colorado (27)
North
1) Stanford (7, 3)
2) Oregon (8, 2)
3) UW (18)
4) WSU (20)
5) OSU (26)
6) Cal (26)
A couple of things to note.
My going out on a limb and predicting utter dispair in the Land of Troy this season, skewed them to third place, even though they had more first place votes than ASU or Arizona. Remember a few weeks ago when lots of Cal fans made a fuss about my slotting of them in last place? Well clearly a few other people didn’t think to highly of Cal, as three of us pegged them in last place, two in 5th Place, and only one had them finishing in the top half of the division. Again, these are pre-season prognastications and games are not played on papers. Also, you cannot forget to factor in the injury bug. Stanford and Oregon are clearly the class of the North Division right now, but if either team has injuries in a few key spots, that could open up the door for the four teams below them. Oregon still has too much talent and Chip Kelley is still calling the shots, which is why you don’t see many pegging them to be bothered by the NCAA investigation. Is this the year where USC finally slows down? The scholarship limitations (in-place for three more years) and post-season ban (which expires after this season) have got to affect this program at some point don’t they? Finally, there are a few universal truths to all of our takes. We all anticipate a dogfight at the top of the Pac 12 North, while the remaining four spots are completely up in the air; as evidenced by UW being closer to a cellar finisher in 3rd Place than they are a division champion. We also seem to have similar thoughts as to who will be in both divison cellars.
Anyways, that’s all I’ve got for you, have a great day! Is it next season yet?
