Pac-10 Football - Better Than Advertised?

Week two of the college football season has come and (almost) gone. Pre-season predictions seem about what I'd expected - wrong. As usual, the Pac-10 was given no respect, essentially viewed as USC + 9, where the 9 were not good enough to be .500 teams in the "real" conferences - Big 10, Big 12, and, ugh, the SEC.

So Week Two is over and let us review the non-conference wins/losses. Pac-10 is 13-3 (.8125). Big-10 (which has 11 teams) is 18-4 (.8181). Big-12 is 17-5 (.7727). SEC is 13-3 (.8125).

In head-to-head matchups, the Pac-10 is 1-1 against the Big-10, 1-0 against the Big-12, and 1-0 against the SEC. The sole embarrasment was the Beavers' loss to Cincinnati of the Big East (which as a conference has gone 12-2 (.8571 - best of the bunch), and 1-1 against the Pac-10).

And the Pac-10 wins aren't squeakers, either. Washington waxed Syracuse 42-14, Cal handed it Tennessee 45-31 in a game that wasn't as close as the score indicates (although SEC/Tennessee fan seems to think otherwise - big surprise there), Arizona State unloaded on Colorado 33-14, and of course, Oregon bitch-slapped Michigan 39-7 (and actually took steps to avoid running it up on the Wolverines).

Anyhow, the point is that the Pac-10 is far, far better than the rest of the country expected, and is 4-2 against the supposed "power" conferences. Next week should see the Pac-10 go 1-1 against the Big-12 and Big-10, with USC walloping an overrated Nebraska squad while a much-improved and resurgent UW will be unable to maintain against The Ohio State University (but I wouldn't fall over dead either if UW surprised me - they're capable). The rest of the conference ought to go 7-1, the sole loss being Stanford to San Jose State.

One interesting thing to note when comparing conferences - the Pac-10 is the only conference where every team plays nine conference games - the rest play eight.