After watching portions of last nights USC@Hawaii game my general thought is that USC is no longer the defensive juggernaut that they used to be. That was the key to their whole success is the defense. It kept them in games and allowed the offense time and opportunities to get back on track when they stalled.

USC looks even more vulnerable than last year based on what I saw last night.

There will be plenty more to come, but some opening thoughts:

• I can’t remember a season as potentially wide open as this one. Seriously, USC is already weakened and has a new coach and sanctions, Oregon is without its star QB, Oregon State is rebuilding in more ways than people care to admit, and up-and-coming teams like Stanford, Arizona, Washington and perhaps UCLA, well, what can I say, some kernels pop, some don’t. About the only thing clear is that WSU is going to still be in the losers bracket and ASU will likely be joining them.
• The “Old Blue” in me says, “Great, for 5 years we we’re poised to win the Pac-10 and now that the Pac-10 is open, Cal is struggling a bit.”
• The optimistic fan in me says that Cal is more in the mix than anyone wants to admit. If Riley can put it together and the new attacking defense can more resemble 2008’s performance as opposed to 2009, there’s no reason this team couldn’t be Rose Bowl bound.
• Personally, I think Washington is the most over appreciated team in the conference. They’ll be just like Stanford in 2008. After getting to 5-7 in 2007 with a generous schedule and a couple lucky wins, they were sure bowl eligibility was coming in 2008. Nope. 5-7 again. Same for the Huskies. I guess if they go 2-1 in non-conference play and beat BYU, they’ve got a shot at 6 wins, but I see them losing to USC, OSU, Oregon, Arizona, Cal and Stanford in conference play. Last I checked that would only get them to 5-7.
• Stanford is also on my “I’m not so sure about them” list, albeit not to the level of UW. AT Oregon, AT Notre Dame, and Oregon State late in the season won’t help them this year. Add in that USC will be out for revenge and it won’t matter that the game is in Palo Alto and the close Big Game will be in Berkeley, somewhere Stanford has struggled of late, and it’s not feeling like a year that they go even further than last year, particularly without Toby. Nevertheless, they’ll be a good team and we’re not talking about missing a bowl game, just not challenging for the Roses.
• The wildcard team of the conference is most definitely UCLA. This is a team that could end up at the losers table pretty early in the season but could also challenge for a Rose Bowl if all the pieces fall into place. Having Arizona, Oregon State and Stanford, 3 teams that are in the mix but not over-powering, at home will help them. If they could have swapped UW and WSU to get the Huskies at home it would have been their best scenario. At the same time, this team really hasn’t shown signs of putting it together yet, so God only knows what will happen with them other than that they’ll lose in Berkeley. 🙂
• The upward surprise of the conference in my humble opinion is WSU. OK, you can get up off the floor now, because I’m not predicting a run for the roses or anything. What I am predicting is 3-6 in conference play. They’re going to get overlooked by 2 teams, I’m not sure who, but it’s going to happen and then they’ll win one out-right, likely either ASU or UW (who will have just lost bowl eligibility in Berkeley the week before). They could easily be 5-7 overall this season with their non-conference schedule.

Next up: Reasons for despair (followed by reasons for hope)

Well, ironically, the “Pac-12” part isn’t official, no new name has been officially chosen, but the fact that the conference will have 12 teams, the traditional 10 plus Colorado (announced last week) and Utah (announced officially today), is official.

Other than that, we don’t know a whole lot yet.

One thing we do know is that the conference HAS NOT decided on how to split the divisions. This is a bit of a surprise considering the information that had Colorado AD indicating they had been promised that they’d be part of the Pac-12 South with the AZ and southern Cal schools. However, from what I’m reading, people have been over-stating the confidence of that fact.

I suspect this is a bit of the telephone game. Larry Scott indicated to the Colorado AD something like “he’ll push for it” or “it’s the most likely case” and the Colorado AD told his contacts that “it’s what I wanted and they are agreeable” and that got morphed into “Colorado was guaranteed it”. Or some similar scenario. Since there’s no official quote from either the Colorado AD or Scott, it’s hard to take those indications as gospel.

We also don’t know for sure there will be a conference championship game (although there will be) or whether the Pac-10 will setup their own TV network (I’d say it’s got a 70% likelihood). Additionally we don’t know if there will be 8 or 9 conference games. We also don’t know what year Colorado will be joining, although it’ll either be 2011 or 2012.

What we do know is that Utah will join in 2011, and that indicates that it’s likely that there will be an attempt to have Colorado come at the same time, however the Big-12 leaving early penalty might impact the decision away from what the Pac-12 would like.

I think I’ve said my peace on what I think is best for the conference, and if Cal can get in the South, my mind will rest easy with what has happened, even if I’m not a big proponent of it. We’ve gained two quality programs and although I’m no big fan of it, the benefits of a conference championship game are hard to ignore. However, if we end up in the North, I’ll be grumbling about it for a long time to come.

More, including possible extended grumbling, to come… (I’m sure)

Well, it appears my worst fears have come to pass. Texas has declined the offer to join the Pac-10, thereby killing any chance of any other major Big-12 team from heading our way either. That leaves 3 likely possibilities:

1. Pac-11: The “default” answer at this point is that nothing else happens, leaving the Pac-10 with 11 teams now that Colorado has officially joined.
2. Pac-12 and Cal in South: The Pac-12 picks up one other team, everyone is assuming it’ll be Utah, but there are some other possibilities that could be pursued, particularly if Utah turns us down. In either case, the assumption is that the conference will be split north/south and Cal and Stanford/the new two with Colorado are the border teams. For this scenario, we’ll assume Cal and Stanford end up in the South and the new two end up in the North.
3. Pac-12 and Cal in the North: Same as above but Cal and Stanford end up in the North and the new two end up in the South.

In my opinion, all three of these are a downgrade over what the conference has now, and only option #3 is anything but a disaster.

For what it is worth, both Denver and Salt Lake are at higher latitudes than Cal and Stanford, although they’re admittedly close (Berkeley is just south of latitude 38, Stanford is just north of lat 37 and Denver and SLC are north of 39 and 40 degrees respectively. To define close, by comparison Portland, Oregon is at 45 and LA is at 34). But as we all implicitly know, latitudes are likely to be one of the last things to decide the split up.

Here’s what I see as the “storyline”. When the teams met for their annual conference, the question of expansion came up and both the Pac-16 and Pac-12 were discussed. In the end both were approved. I’m absolutely confident that both Cal and Stanford were very clear that for the Pac-12 situation that they wanted to be in the South with USC and UCLA. The only question is whether Larry Scott talked them out of it. His point of course would be that we’d be far more likely to attract new teams if we paired them with USC and UCLA.

What’s the answer to whether Larry Scott talked them out of it? Nobody knows for sure, but the Colorado fans seem to think that they’d be paired with USC and UCLA. However, that could easily just be their hopes influencing their thoughts as much as any real info.

It also could be that no promises were made to Colorado, meaning they’d be put in the North if possible, but Larry Scott is keeping the USC/UCLA pairing in his back pocket for negotiations with Utah or whichever team makes team number 12. It might be that Colorado wasn’t insistent, but the next team will be.

So it’s very possible that the answer isn’t even known by insiders like Scott.

In either case, the Pac-11 stinks, stinks, stinks like replacing a toilet with a failed wax seal. Colorado by itself just isn’t worth the lost symmetry and all that made the Pac-10 awesome and we don’t gain anything meaningful like a conference championship game or a notably easier schedule. While the Pac-12 offers something more, a conference championship game and not having to play our difficult full round-robin, being paired with the north will stink worse than the Pac-11.

The north will get less respect and it’ll actually be the more difficult division, particularly if the UW rebound continues apace and UCLA can’t put it together. Plus we’ll lose out on our yearly games versus USC and UCLA. Sure the other teams don’t care about that as much as we do, but there’s no other way to look at it than Cal and Stanford are getting the shortest straw of the group.

Put Cal in the south and it’s closer to an equal situation as the current setup. Obviously we gain a fair amount in the conference championship game and the TV revenue upsides, but I like the round-robin myself. There’s ups and downs to either equation.

But think about this: What’s clear is that neither the north nor the south really want these two new teams. They both want Cal and Stanford. What does it mean when nobody wants the two teams that are supposedly brought in to improve the conference? Doesn’t that say something about whether this is inherently a good deal?

In any case, let’s just hope that scenario #3 works out because everything else is a significant downgrade from where I sit.

If you think the big news on Thursday June 10th, 2010 is that USC is getting a two-year post-season ban and losing 20 30 scholarships over a yet unknown period of 3 years, you are absolutely, moronically wrong (not that there’s anything wrong with that!).

The Big News is that Colorado has officially joined the Pac-10.

Thirty years from now, the USC news will be a footnote, the Pac-10 expansion will be a key moment in the conference.

People have asked what I think about the “Pac-16” (or I’ve heard it referred to as the SAT (surf and turf) conference) and I haven’t completed a post on the subject because I can’t make up my mind. But here’s what I am confident of, I have no interest in the Pac-12 with Colorado and Utah. That scenario loses all that is special about the Pac-10 with its round-robin and natural rivalries without gaining enough in return. So I guess at this point, I just became a proponent of the Pac-16 since the only alternative is either the Pac-12 or even worse, the Pac-11, now that the Colorado announcement is official.

As for the Pac-16, I like the fact that we’re looking at a Pac-8 division in the conference. That’ll work out nicely. I like the fact that the conference championship game will help us in publicity as a conference. I also like the fact that we’ll get access to the Big-12 bowl lineup which is far better than the Pac-10.

However, there are some downsides. We end up losing some bowl slots in bowls that formerly had both a Pac-10 and Big-12 alignment. They’re not going to keep two slots, so the combined conference will lose a spot. If it was only one bowl, but it’s 2 1/2: Alamo, Holiday, and Sun every other year. Add that to the fact that there’s going to be a whole lot of extra competition for those bowl slots and it’s at least a bit worrisome that perhaps the added bowls won’t be enough to improve the situation for the existing Pac-10 teams. I’d want to see the bowls be forced to pick fairly based on team success and not just “pick in order”, which gets very complicated with a two division conference.

I’m also VERY against conference games against the other half that COUNT (and I can’t emphasize this enough) for who is the division champion. I’d love to play Texas every few years, but I most definitely don’t like the idea that the year that we play Texas in Texas ends up being the year we’d otherwise win the Pac-8 division except for that loss sinking us. The same goes for Oklahoma. No, it better be just the 7 games in the division that determine the division winner. I hate, hate, HATE how the current 12 team conferences do it and it’ll be even worse with 8 teams because at most there will only be 2 out-of-division conference games and there’s just no way to “balance” those games so that it doesn’t unduly affect the division standings.

So, from where I sit, if we either only play 7 conference games or if we play 8 or 9 but only the 7 within the division count for the division standings and our new bowl alignments are significantly better than our current alignments (so much so that even though we’ve got these extra teams and lost a few spots, we’re in better shape), then I’d be happy if the Pac-16 came to pass.

Particularly now that the deed is done with Colorado and expansion is officially underway.

Word on the street is that USC has been hit with a two-year bowl ban, starting in 2010 and 20 lost scholarships over a yet undisclosed period of years (likely either 2 or 4) Update on 6/11 at noon: when the official report came out yesterday afternoon it turns out it was 30 over 3 years, which means no more than 15 new signees each year and no more than 75 total for the next 3 years (end update). It’ll also have to vacate its wins in 2004.

Some people think this is big news, but other than the Bears having a slightly better shot at winning the Pac-10 and going to the Rose Bowl the next couple years, I don’t think it means much. It’s not enough to effect USC’s program overall. The recruits who have yet to commit are very unlikely to be effected. Plus, particularly if the 20 30 scholarships are over 4 3 years, it’s not going to prevent USC from getting many recruits. Over 2 years may have a larger effect.

So from where I sit, USC will be back to it’s dominant position in two three years time, unless Kiffen turns out to be a bust (which I don’t think he will).

I was perusing Jeff Sagarin’s computer ratings this morning. His composite ranking places Cal 17th in the country overall, though his Predictor rating (which is more accurate, though less politically correct because it takes into account margin of victory) places them 28th.

I was more amused by the ratings of the teams Cal has played this year. Talk about three stinkers: Maryland is rated 115th overall (below a few I-AA schools), Washington State is rated 119th, and I-AA Eastern Washington is rated just one slot below the Cougars at 120th.

Cal’s other wins were over Sagarin #42 UCLA and Sagarin #59 Minnesota.

In contrast, Cal’s losses? To Sagarin #3 Oregon and Sagarin #5 USC. That’s the good news. The bad news? Cal has yet to play Sagarin #14 Arizona, Sagarin #23 Stanford, and Sagarin #24 Oregon State. In terms of the pure Predictor rating, Sagarin would predict that Cal will finish the season 9-3, with wins over Arizona, ASU, and Washington and a loss to Stanford (!). I can’t really call that an unreasonable prediction. It might even be optimistic.

But as always, computers don’t play the games. So we’ll see.

For what it’s worth, Cal’s current ratings in the computer systems that make up a portion of the BCS standings: 26, 17, 27, 20, 15, and 21, for an average computer rating of 20th in the country. (Hat tip: Jerry Palm’s CollegeBCS site.)

More thoughts on our competition (that we didn’t play this week and beat to death… which reminds me of an old family joke, well humorous vignette anyway, to explain the way my family is, about Lord Crawford back in Scotland in the horse carriage when the driver comes back and says, “sir, the horse is dead.” sending Lord Crawford into a rage “I’LL SHOW YOU A DEAD HORSE” (whip!)) from around the Pac-10:

• WSU (6) @ USC (27): USC continues to look very vulnerable. If WSU’s offense wasn’t so incompetent, this would have actually been a semi-competitive game. Worse yet for USC fans, this was in the Coliseum, so no excuses about playing away from home. USC looks VERY vulnerable and I sure hope that us Cal fans bring the noise on Saturday because we can beat this team. As for WSU, at home they’ll prove to be an easy win in a month. No surprise there.
• ASU (17) @ Georgia (20): Boy, that was a tough loss for ASU. They really had a shot at the upset. It’s hard to tell what to make of this game because I’m pretty confident that Georgia is suspect. I will say this, the 17 that Georigia gave up is the smallest number that they have all season. So my gut feel is that the ASU offense isn’t all that potent. At the same time, it feels like their defense may be better than advertised.
• Arizona (37) @ Oregon State (32): Boy, Oregon State sure isn’t living up to their usual reputation. The offense is sputtering and the defense isn’t what it used to be. Never overlook the Beavers but I just get the feeling that this is a down team and the defenses that kept them in so many games for their opportunistic offense to capitalize on, isn’t there this season and it’s going to be a long season for the Beavers. As for Arizona, it looks like their young QB has potential and with their defense, they might just be this year’s Oregon State (meaning the defense gives the offense opportunistic chances).
• Washington (14) @ Stanford (34): I’ll call this one the enigma bowl because I don’t know what to make of either of these teams. Is USC just so remarkably horrible that we are over-appreciating Washington? It sure seems like it with the beat-down Stanford gave them. On the other hand, the were very competitive with LSU who looks to be on the rise, so I just don’t know what to think. As for Stanford… so who are they? Are they the team that let Wake Forrest push them around all 2nd half or are they the team that put the beat-down on USC-beating Washington? This may be a case of two teams who are good enough to be inspired at home but lack the fortitude to win on the road (I sure wish I could say I have no experience with that). That would explain a lot for both of these teams to date. The Tin Bowl in Palo Alto is becoming quite the home-field advantage despite only have 15K fans in the stands.

From now on I’ll use the end of this post to re-cap what’s going on in the Pick’Em League:

Tedfordium continues to be the class act of the group with his 84.4% winning percentage. Usually we have someone with a great winning percentage but who’s doing horribly in the MVD and TPD, but Tedfordium is pretty strong there too. Blogging co-host Jason Snell is back on his Mojo and is a solid 2nd place and CalBandGreat had a stellar week to get into 3rd place. I’m slowly creeping up the standings into 4th, but there’s a big group of us, all the way to the 9th spot who are very close. Tedfordium is leading the winning percentage category, so he should be better based on odds not spreads, Jason is leading in margin of victory, so he should be betting the spread and I’m leading the total points and should be betting on the over-under.

I wanted this to be a regular feature, but ran out of time the first couple weeks. Let’s see if I can keep it going through the rest of the season.

• USC (13) @ UW (16): This could be a blog post of its own. I saved this game on the Tivo and watched it later in the weekend. Here’s the two sides to this upset:
• Upsides for the Bears:
• This is the most sloppy USC team I’ve ever seen. One thing you could count on USC for throughout the years is that they were perfect in their simplicity. They just hit you hard and did what they did and won even when it was more ugly than it could be. I think this is part of the reason they never looked inexperienced, they just kept things simple. Not this team. They’re fumbling for no good reason, over-pursuing on defense, allowing gaping holes in the secondary, just not very good play. For the first time in recent memory USC looks like an inexperienced team.
• Neither USC line looked all that strong, even the lauded offensive line, but particularly the defensive line. Between Cal’s confusing and attacking 3-4 defense that’ll give the USC offensive line as much if not more than they can handle and Cal’s rushing game having plenty of holes to run through, these USC lines better improve dramatically if they want a shot at beating Cal. They didn’t control the line of scrimmage.
• Unlike previous USC early loses, something about this didn’t feel like an aberration. USC looked shaky against Ohio State and they looked even more shaky versus UW.
• This was not some early lead by UW that they had to hold on to like previous USC upset examples. Nope, UW was down 10 early and the game was tied at 13 mid-4th quarter. UW still came up with the game winning drive.
• Notes of caution:
• Aaron Corp was TERRIBLE! Really, if USC had any balance on offensive, USC doesn’t lose this game. It’s pretty clear now why Barkely was starting. He’ll be healthy by the Cal game in two weeks so we won’t have the benefits that UW did.
• USC had a number of turnovers that killed drives. I’ve got this in the ‘upsides’ half as “sloppy play” and we can definitely take that sign as something that compromises the team, but turnovers are not something to count on. A lot of the time its the luck of the draw. Also, it’s something that can more easily be corrected in practice so USC may not have this problem by the time the Bears get their shot at it.
• USC does this every year, lose their first conference game, and comes out no worse for the wear, national title implications aside. Even the Bears win in 2003 was the 1st conference game for USC. 2008 Oregon State was too. 2006 Oregon State was the first game if you don’t count Washington and Washington State as conference teams. Only Stanford, which really won because of a QB injury wasn’t the formulaic loss (hmmm… 1st conference game, 1st conference road game, injured starting QB… USC didn’t stand a chance, did they?)
• I know this has been all about USC, but don’t forget UW. Going to Seattle in December could be trouble with a revitalized UW to match up against. No matter what happens from here on out that’s going to be a team that knows they’re capable of beating anyone, even if they don’t always pull it off. Let’s hope the Bears have the Rose Bowl locked up before we get to that one.
• Utah (24) @ Oregon (31): Another one I watched Tivo’ed. If Oregon wants to keep winning, they’re going to have to clean up their act substantially. For whatever reason both Purdue and Utah seemed to completely forget that Oregon runs a read-option and that Masoli is a pretty decent run threat in those plays. More than half of their scores came on long Masoli runs where the DE and safety bit on the inside run. Cal is not going to be so stupid. Add in that Masoli still has trouble hitting the broad side of a barn throwing the ball and Oregon put the ball on the ground WAY too many times (they were even more sloppy than USC) and Cal will win this game with ease if Oregon puts up a repeat performance. But don’t count out this Oregon team yet. They’ve still got lots of talent and if they turn the corner mistake wise, they’ll be a much more formidable opponent than they have been.
• Arizona (17) @ Iowa (27): This Arizona team is about what everyone expected. Not quite good enough on offense to be good but having a strong enough defense to keep them in lots of games. Iowa was just a bit to strong for Arizona to handle on the road. Still, I’m thankful Cal gets them at home this year.
• Kansas St. (9) @ UCLA (23): Anybody else getting more scared about UCLA? OK, they’re not USC yet, but we all know how tough UCLA has been in the Rose Bowl. This team is for real and even without their starting QB they’re looking like a formidable yet beatable foe.
• Cincinnati (28) @ Oregon State (18): I really expected a stronger effort out of OSU. Cinci seems to have their number and Oregon State always starts slow, but I think this game is further proof OSU is a step behind where they were last year.
• SMU (27) @ WSU (30) 1-OT: Nice to see WSU get one in the win column before it’s too late. Actually, here’s my prediction for WSU. They’ll win at least one conference game, more likely two, over teams that assume they’ll be as terrible as last year and won’t bring their A-game to the frozen potato patch (the less terrifying version of the frozen tundra) in Pullman.
• SJ State (17) @ Stanford (42): Get ready for an obnoxious Stanford fan base that thinks their remarkably mediocre team is something special. It’s not. SJ State stinks this year and Stanford just doesn’t have the tools yet to compete on the big stage.
• LA Monroe (14) @ ASU (38): Is anyone still awake or are we all snoring now that we’re in the garbage games? Ho Hum.

Overall, the Pac-10 well represented themselves this weekend. The only non-conference loss was to Cincinnati (EDIT: Oops. That’s two loses with Arizona going down to Iowa) who everyone thinks is going to win the Big East again (or so I hear). If OSU could have pulled that one out the Pac-10 would be nearly unimpeachable. As it stands, the few losses are either to good teams (LSU, etc.) or by teams that are at the bottom of the conference.

So, I guess USC is vulnerable after all, huh?

Great post on ESPN from Ted Miller, its Pac-10 beat writer, about USC’s problematic dominance of the conference.

This line made me smile, ruefully:

In 2004, Cal was knocked out of the Rose Bowl when Texas coach Mack Brown successfully lobbied poll voters to manipulate the system.

Succinct, isn’t it?

But this one made me laugh out loud:

The Bears have 17 starters, including Heisman Trophy candidate Jahvid Best, back from a team that won nine games in 2008.

USC, meanwhile, is breaking in a new quarterback and replacing eight starters from one of the best defenses in college football history.

Are the Trojans vulnerable?

“No,” Jahvid Best said.

“I’ve heard the same thing every year after they lose seven or eight guys to the NFL. Everybody says they’re not going to be as good this year. But they come back [every year] and are just as good if not better than the year before. They’ve proven that no matter how many people leave, they are still going to be one of the best teams in the Pac-10. So we’re not counting on them being vulnerable. We’re counting on our execution on offense and defense to beat them.”

Not only is that a funny line from Best, but he’s right — you can’t ever, ever underestimate USC. After Cal’s early games with Oregon and USC, I get the feeling we’ll know exactly where Cal falls in the conference. Cross fingers.

A few days ago the Pac-10 announced Larry Scott as the replacement for Tom Hansen as Pac-10 commissioner. I’ve done a little research in the last few days on Scott and here are my thoughts:

1. He definitely seems to have the kind of intensity and charisma that the Pac-10 needs from its commissioner.
2. It sounds like he is a risk taker.
3. It seems he has absolutely no experience with college sports nor any sport outside of tennis.
4. However it seems he recognizes he has a lot to learn.
5. He knows a lot about securing sponsorship and TV contracts for leagues that are not an “easy sell”.
6. There’s no doubt that his experience with women’s tennis means he’s being asked to take a balanced approach to sports in the conference.

Overall, I don’t know if it was the “right” pick, but I think it was a right-minded pick. The conference realizes the Pac-10 isn’t the easiest sell but also realizes it has a lot to offer. It realizes that it needs someone bold and energetic.

And it made sure it hired someone who met those characteristics.

The “catch” is that it is someone who’s a duck out of water now. For some people, that’s not a problem at all, in fact, it’s a strength. They get to see our problems with a fresh set of eyes. However, there are some people who have a passion for a specific thing and when you take them out of that environment, they cease to have the characteristics that came from their passion.

That’s the risk with Scott, he’s a tennis guy. Was he good at promoting tennis because he’s good at promoting lower-tier sports or because he loves tennis so much? Really, no one will be able to answer that question until the 2010 TV contracts and bowl arrangements come out, and that’s at the very earliest.

Overall, I’m taking an optimistic wait and see attitude.

From Pat Forde on ESPN.com:

Nastiest Fans — USC’s, last Saturday for the Notre Dame game. There were churlish drivers by the dozens en route to the stadium. There was the surly elevator operator who tried to tell a woman (Irish fan) escorting her son in a wheelchair that she had to leave her two young daughters behind to wait for the next elevator. And there were the fans spewing penitentiary-worthy profanity at the Notre Dame players and coaches as they exited the field. That “SC” stands for Stay Classy, Trojans fans.

My wife would certainly agree. And I would too. We have never seen ruder, more classless fans than the ones we met at the Coliseum. I won’t generalize — not all USC fans are jerks. But there are a bunch of jerks who like to dress up in red, go to the Coliseum, and say really nasty stuff.

Often when one talks about ‘controling one’s own destiny’ in football, they talk about it late in the season and generally when only one team has it. And while that’s a good scenario to talk about it, mid-season we often forget when we talk about it that it’s possible for more than one team to control their own destiny.

In fact, at the beginning of the season EVERY team controls their own destiny in a conference like the Pac-10. Go undefeated in conference and you will win the conference. (duh)

The reason I bring this up is to look at who, now 1/2 way into the conference schedule, still controls their own destiny:

• Cal: With Cal’s one loss coming to Arizona who has lost two conference games now with their loss to USC on Saturday, if Cal runs the table, they’re guaranteed the Rose Bowl
• Oregon State: With their one loss coming to Stanford, another team with two conference losses, they also control their destiny.

Of the two other 1-loss teams, USC needs someone to beat Oregon State to get back in control. The two likely candidates for that are Cal and Oregon. Oregon needs someone to beat USC. The likely candidate for that is Cal, if anyone can do it. Both teams have Cal on their calendar in the next two weeks and before Cal plays the opponent they need them to beat. So what they’re hoping for is to beat Cal, but to do it in a way that doesn’t kill their confidence when they face the team they need Cal to beat.

Is it just me, or is this all very fascinating?

Of course, the other way to look at this is the way nobody is looking at it. People aren’t looking at it this way because Cal has two games in between now and then that they’re likely to lose at least one of. Nevertheless, as of right now, November 15th is the day and Corvalis is the place where the two teams that control their destiny will meet to fight it out for the singular title of ‘control of their own destiny’.

In the end what this all means is that the next three weeks will decide the fate of the Bears. Right now, everything from the Rose Bowl to the Hawaii Bowl is still up for grabs for the Bears. By the time November 16th rolls around, it should be pretty clear where the Bears are headed.

After yesterday’s debacle (could you imagine how Cal fans would react if Cal was on top of the polls and got knocked off by Oregon State… oh wait), I’ve done some thinking about the whole “tough conferences” and “strength of schedule” arguments that fly around the country.

First, let’s start with the obvious issue of that there will be two very different responses to last nights game depending on where your loyalties lie. Pac-10 haters will say: “Man, not only is the Pac-10 super weak, but USC can’t even beat them. They STINK!” Of course Pac-10 lovers will say: “See, look at how good the Pac-10 is. Not even USC can beat everyone in it!”

Who’s right? I think the real answer is neither of them.

The reality is that conferences don’t play conferences. Teams play teams. There are certain teams that matchup well against other teams and there are certain teams that have a knack for the upset. Add in that if you play the same game multiple times, the winner isn’t always the same, and we fans make WAY too much of each individual game and each individual matchup and its implication not only for those two teams but, and this is the part that really boggles the mind, for the whole conference. Heck, we go so far to make sweeping conclusions about conferences that weren’t even a part of that game.

I’m sorry, but there’s no way to make sense of Oregon State > USC >>> Ohio State >> Troy > Middle Tennessee > Maryland >> Cal >> Michigan State >>> Notre Dame… etc. Although I wasn’t able to find a loop in this case, it’s only because we’re a few weeks in. If Notre Dame beats Stanford, the loop would be complete! (As Stanford beat Oregon State.)

As much as everyone knows how bogus the above logic is, it’s downright miraculous just how frequently the same logic is used by the same people who admit it’s ridiculous. It’s so frequent and so ridiculous, the only thing it is in the end is hilarious.

So, here’s MY analysis of things:

There’s no doubt the SEC is a tough conference. They’ve got the highest number of quality teams and whoever wins that conference, minus some unforseen complication, deserves to play in the BCS championship game. However, the SEC also has a high number of weak teams. Kentucky, Vanderbuilt, Mississippi and Mississippi State all have proven to be dramatically sub-par over the last decade with a rare exception here and there.

The same can basically be said of the Big-12. Although the quality of those top teams is a bit lower than the SEC, there’s no doubt that facing the best in the Big-12 is no cakewalk. At the same time, they’ve got Baylor, Iowa State and Kansas State in the conference too.

Then you’ve got the Big East, ACC and Big-10. They’re all conferences that don’t have the fire-power on top, particularly this year, as the SEC and Big-12 and still have their share of weak teams. The possible exception would be the Big-10 that top to bottom might by the most solid conference on the wrong side of the Rockies.

Which brings me ot our beloved Pac-10. Is the Pac-10 the best conference in the land? No, it’s not. I’m not going try and blow that smoke where the sun don’t shine. USC, Cal, Arizona State, Oregon and Oregon State just wouldn’t match up against Georgia, Florida, LSU and whoever next best two of Tennessee, Auburn and Alabama ends up being. But you know what, there’s a LOT of tough competition in the Pac-10. On any given Saturday, even some of the mediocre teams in the conference can best the best. When’s the last time the conference champion in the SEC lost to a team in the bottom third? Well, it’s happened 3 out of the last 4 years in the Pac-10. And relatively speaking, the last few years have been some of the most unbalanced in Pac-10 history due to USC’s dominance.

What does this all mean? Only God knows, really. But what it does mean is that anytime I hear some pundit or some fan trash-talk “USC and the 9 dwarves” or even when I hear someone trash-talking the SEC or the Big-12 or even the Big-10 with the standard “well look at these handfull of games that prove my point!” logic, they’re going to get no respect from me.

It’s just not that simple.

Ragnarok over at The California Golden blogs has a good post about turnovers and winning percentage. Everything he says, minus a portion of his conclusion, is dead on accurate. There’s no better way to lose a game than turning of the ball and no better way to win a game that protecting it well. But Ragnarok makes a conclusion from it that I wouldn’t (the part in bold):

Still, despite the last two games, Cal still leads the Pac-10 with 18 turnovers recovered and a +7 turnover margin, and their 11 turnovers given up is tied for the fewest in the conference with Oregon, Arizona State, and Stanford. (Really? Stanford leads the conference in something?) This should give us hope going forward that Cal remains a team that is both able to take care of the ball on offense and create takeaways on defense. If this is indeed the case, I like the Bears chances to win Pac-10 games down the stretch (especially against USC, which has coughed up the ball 17 times this season and has a -4 turnover margin).

To be clear about what I’m saying, I completely agree that I think Cal has a big upside in that it has a history of taking care of the football and if they can get back to that trend, the Bears have a great shot at absolutely dominanting the majority of their remaining games. What I don’t agree about is that USC is vulnerable because of their past bad turnover performance.

While I completely understand his perspective, the way I see it, the teams with a high turnover ratio are the ones to fear, not the ones to be confident about. In my view of the world turnovers are mistakes more than 90% of the time, instead of being induced by good defenses (although there is no doubt that the best defenses find a way to force them) or even overall weakness of the team making the mistakes. Mistakes can be corrected much easier than an undersized offensive line or poor conditioning. Running backs can be taught to better hold onto the ball. Quarterbacks can be taught to avoid bad throwing situations. It’s much harder to tell a player to “run faster!” As such, a team that has losses because of turnovers is a team that if they clean up their act may have the potential to be VERY strong.

As evidence of this I present to you a quote from my Rivals Oregon State preview:

The other meaningful statistic is the 3.8 turnovers per game the Beavers are giving up. Of course this statistic is a bad one for Oregon State fans, but it should also be a warning to Bears fans that Oregon State could be playing a lot better football without the mistakes. In Oregon State’s other blowout loss outside of UCLA, a non-conference romp by Cincinnati, Oregon State turned the ball over 9 times including 6 interceptions, a fumble and two special teams mistakes including a blocked punt for a touchdown.

There is no question that Oregon State will be unable to win this game if they continue to make mistakes like they did against Cincinnati. However, if they can reduce those mistakes, something that can be more easily fixed in practice than an undersized offensive line or a slow set of defensive backs, the Beavers might just have a shot at upsetting the Bears.

We all know how that turned out…

So for me, when I see that ASU hasn’t turned the ball over much and is winning their games that says to me that they’re more vulnerable than their final results indicate… they’re a few mistakes away from some big upsets but when USC has a horrible turnover ratio it says to me that this a VERY dangerous team if they can get their act together. Said another way, USC is a couple of turnovers away from being undefeated and #1 in the country. That makes me really nervous come November 10th.