(Written by kencraw)

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)