(Written by kencraw)

It’s been reported in some venues that the Pac-10 could see as little as 3 teams in bowl games. Here’s how:

1. USC misses because their ineligible
2. Cal misses because they lose out (UW being the “upset”).
3. UW misses because they lose to UCLA (or WSU)
4. UCLA misses because they lose to both ASU and USC
5. ASU misses because they lose to Stanford and Arizona
6. OSU misses becasue they lose to Stanford, Oregon and USC
7. WSU misses because they suck

What’s most notable about that list is that none of them are unreasonable things. There’s no major upsets in the list. So it’s a real possibility. But all it takes is a couple of the “push games” to go the other way and we get a fair number in. If Cal beats UW and UCLA beats ASU, that’s 5 teams in bowl games. If OSU can pull a minor upset of USC at home, that’s 6 teams in bowl games.

But what I find equally interesting is that we could have as many as eight teams in with some upsets:

1. Oregon is already in
2. Stanford is already in
3. Arizona is already in
4. Cal is in because they beat Stanford
5. UW is in because they win out (UCLA, WSU, Cal)
6. UCLA is in because they beat ASU and USC
7. ASU is in because they beat Arizona and Stanford (and get the FCS waiver)
8. OSU is in because they beat USC (or Stanford, or Oregon) and WSU

The longest shot of the list is of course ASU, which has little hope of beating both Arizona and Stanford, and then they’d need a waiver (if they beat UCLA too, they wouldn’t need the waiver, but we’d lose UCLA from the list of bowl eligibles). But the rest aren’t all that bad, particularly now that USC seems to be losing some steam.

Just an FYI.