(Written by kencraw)

More Pac-12 games means more clarity. With only Arizona and WSU idle last weekend we learned quite a bit more. It appears normalcy is returning.

1. Oregon 45 – Washington 20: (Oregon entry) Another year passes and yet another beat-down of Washington by Oregon. It’s only surprising in how consistent it is. Oregon is continuing to reassert itself after the Arizona game.
2. Arizona State 26 – Stanford 10: (ASU entry) I wouldn’t put too much into ASU beating Stanford so solidly. They did have the benefit of a bye that their opponent didn’t have. Plus, it’s clear that Stanford is not the team they were in the past. It’s a lot more difficult to have a top-notch team when you can’t score and you can’t even hold on to the ball to give your defense some rest.
3. USC 56 – Colorado 28 (USC entry) USC seems to be settling back in as well and is putting their loss to ASU behind them. If they had beat just about anyone else in the conference by this much, they leapfrog ASU.
4. Arizona (bye): Things get a lot tougher for Arizona moving forward. They’ve still got to play ASU and UCLA. But for now, their soft front schedule combined with the win over Oregon keep them high up the list.
5. Utah 29 – Oregon State 23: (Utah entry) If Utah keeps winning games, they’ll start leapfrogging some of the teams in front of them. All of a sudden their loss to WSU is looking like the anomaly. But just like Arizona, I’m not quite ready to buy into the hype. Their tough games are still in front of them: USC, ASU, Stanford, Arizona. And with their win over UCLA looking less and less impressive each week, they could fall quickly if the losses start to come.
6. UCLA 36 – Cal 34: (UCLA entry) UCLA escaped Berkeley with a win and stops the bleeding. The road ahead is not without it’s perils and they need to re-group and start winning more convincingly if they are going to rise up the list.
7. Arizona State 26 – Stanford 10: (Stanford entry) After having their way against WSU, Stanford is right back into disaster recovery mode. Never have I seen a team regress so thoroughly offensively in a season. This team could lose a lot more if they don’t fix the problems. Even some of the weaker teams that will struggle with Stanford’s defense might eek out a win just by default by getting on the scoreboard more than once.
8. Oregon 45 – Washington 20: (UW entry) I hope UW enjoyed beating up on the Bears last week, because there was little to be excited about after Saturday. They’ve got 3 more measuring games and they’re all in the next 4 weeks. Win most of them and UW can salvage the impression their a team on the rise. Lose and despite likely getting bowl eligible, this will be a team that is regressing.
9. Utah 29 – Oregon State 23: (OSU entry) That was a tough loss for the Beavers to take. It was a very winnable game against a team one could argue they should have beat. They’re sitting in a similar spot as Cal. The resume isn’t that strong, the front half was too soft (frankly worse than the Bears) and the back half is full of games they won’t be favored in. It might just be that the winner of the Cal-OSU game is the only one of the two who will be bowl eligible.
10. UCLA 36 – Cal 34 (Cal entry) Speaking of painful losses that were tough to swallow, the Bears now need to find at least one win from Oregon, OSU, USC, and Stanford. Not exactly a promising list, particularly considering they play OSU on the road.
11. Washington State (bye): It’s going to take a couple of big wins for WSU to get out of the bottom two. At this point, there’s a pretty big gap between the middle and the bottom and it’s officially between #10 and #11.
12. USC 56 – Colorado 28: (CU entry) OUCH! Colorado is in big-time collapse mode. You want to know why their coach was so upset as things fell apart in Berkeley? Because he knew the whole season hinged on that game. They needed the confidence going into OSU and they needed those wins to be able to believe they could win any of the remaining games on the schedule. I used to think they might pull off an upset or two. Now I think they’re the 2014 version of the Bears and things are going to get ugly quick.

A full slate of 6 conference games this weekend to look forward to! (Perhaps the chaos returns this weekend?)