bleu wrote:I have to disagree. Right now they look good in the polls (like they do every year early in the season)
I mean...this objective analysis by 538 suggest that PAC 12 teams may in fact be the least overrated early in the season — mostly underrated. Out of 17 teams that have a history of regularly winding up with worse final rankings than their preseason rankings, only one (USC) is from the PAC 12:
- 5 — SEC
- 4 — Big Ten
- 3 — ACC
- 3 — Big 12
- 1 — Pac 12
- 1 — other (Notre Dame)
bleu wrote:And the bottom part of the conference looks DREADFUL (Oregon St, Arizona, Arizona St).
You think that crew is appreciably worse than Rutgers, Purdue, and Illinois? than Boston College, Syracuse, and Virginia? than...
bleu wrote:But other than that the Pac 12 really hasn't done anything yet.
Well, not many games have been played yet. In the small sample size that we have, the PAC 12 has the best winning % against the rest of the power 5 thus far, at 4–1. It's not like any other conference has a superlative resume already. ACC, SEC, and Big 12 all have losing records against other Power 5 teams. The only other conference with a winning record against the rest of the power 5 is the Big Ten, and 1) PAC 12 has the head-to-head edge at 2–1 so far, 2) Big Ten has some embarrassing losses, and not much in the way of impressive wins, and 3) they flopped on the biggest stage they've had so far (loss to Oklahoma) after going 3–7 in the bowls last year.
So it's pretty hard to be wowed by any conference so far. Everyone's had mixed results.
I'd put SEC #1, and then everyone else really close to each other. I think the middle of the Pac-12 might be the best in the nation, actually. But I'm not at all convinced yet that the top tier Pac-12 teams are really elite.