Here’s a look at the Pac-10 Conference race. It was sent to me in an e-mail and apparently gleaned from several West Coast papers, including a couple Oregonian and Register-Guard columnists:
Oregon 6-1, 8-2 – at Arizona, OSU
Stanford 6-2, 7-3 – Cal, Notre Dame
Oregon St 5-2, 7-3 – at WSU, at Oregon
Arizona 4-2, 6-3 – Oregon, at ASU, at USC
USC 4-3, 7-3 - bye, UCLA, Arizona
Cal 4-3, 7-3 – at Stanford, at Washington
UCLA 2-5, 5-5 – ASU, at USC
ASU 2-5, 4-6 – at UCLA, Arizona
UW 2-5, 3-7 – bye, WSU, Cal
WSU 0-7, 1-9 – OSU, at UW
Wilner, San Jose Mercury…
Updating the Rose Bowl race, which is down to four teams:
Key games:
Nov. 21: Cal at Stanford and Oregon at Arizona
Nov. 28: Arizona at Arizona State
Dec. 3: Oregon State at Oregon
Dec. 5: Arizona at USC
Before I get to the team-by-team scenarios, a few notes:
1. I’m assuming that Oregon State beats Washington State.
2. There can be a three-team tie at 7-2 but not a four-team tie.
3. Disregarding No. 1 for a moment … and in an attempt to rock your world … there’s a way the league could finish with six teams tied at 6-3 — and only one result in the sequence is farfetched:
Cal (three losses) beats Stanford (third loss) and Washington.
Arizona (two losses) beats ASU and Oregon (second loss).
USC (three losses) beats UCLA and Arizona (third loss).
Oregon State (two losses) beats Oregon (third loss).
Washington State beats Oregon State (third loss).
And if that happens, the champion would be … USC.
Now, back to reality.
*** Oregon (6-1, lost to Stanford)
Status: Controls its own destiny.
Simplest path to Pasadena: Beat Arizona (road) and Oregon State (home).
Through the back door: The Ducks might be able to lose to the Cats and still win the league — depending on what happens to Arizona and Stanford — but a loss to the Beavers would be far more problematic.
Must avoid: A two-team tie with Stanford.
*** Stanford (6-2, Oregon St/Arizona)
Status: Needs help
Simplest path to Pasadena: There were six steps between Stanford and the Rose Bowl, and now there are four: Stanford beats Cal, Arizona beats Oregon, Oregon beats Oregon State and USC beats Arizona.
Individually, those all seem reasonable. But taken in total, the odds remain against Stanford.
Through the back door: It’s possible for Stanford to get to Pasadena by beating Cal and having two of the three above-mentioned results go the wrong way.
But best I can tell, the Cardinal cannot win the league if OSU beats Oregon. OSU would win a tiebreaker with Stanford … Arizona would win a tiebreaker with itself, Stanford and OSU … and the Beavers would win a tiebreaker with themselves, Stanford and Oregon.
Must avoid: A loss to Cal.
*** Oregon State (5-2, Arizona/USC)
Status: Needs help.
Simplest path to Pasadena: Beat Washington State and Oregon, hope Arizona loses. OSU would win tiebreakers with Stanford and Oregon.
Through the back door: It’s nailed shut. If the Beavers lose the Civil War, they’re done.
Must avoid: A loss to Oregon.
*** Arizona (4-2, Washington/Cal)
Status: Controls its own destiny.
Simplest path to Pasadena: Win out.
Despite the loss to Cal, the Wildcats would win the league if they run the table, because they’d have tiebreaker advantages over the Ducks and Cardinal.
Through the back door: It closed Saturday.
Must avoid: Another loss.
Canzano, The Oregonian
Our fate includes this: Chills. Certainly some degree of conference tiebreakers. And maybe the conference’s automatic Bowl Championship Series bid and a chance to remind Ohio State that USC (which beat the Buckeyes in the early season) is now serving as the conference pinata.
Sure, given the past few seasons, and coach Mike Riley’s strange unwillingness to sit star players in blowout games, there’s reasonable doubt that the Beavers will arrive healthy at Autzen Stadium. There is also the issue of Stanford’s legitimacy and the Ducks dicey visit to Tucson next week. But I’m convinced after watching these two in-state programs rumble closer every week that we’re headed to a brilliant collision and we’ve probably been headed here all along.
You can fight your fate. You can ignore it. But what you can not do is escape it.
They’re efficient, balanced and dangerous. As contenders go, they’re for real. Yes, that goes for both in-state teams.
I can’t be alone in looking at the best the Big Ten Conference has to offer and hoping the Pacific-10 Conference gets to send either Oregon or Oregon State to Pasadena to clear up the matter of West Coast respect.
The state should be proud. The Pac-10 should be proud. You should be proud if you’re among those who turn a stadium parking lot into a gathering point for the friends and family on weekends.
You buy tickets. You pay for parking. You invest your disposable income and your valuable hope with teams that have left you feeling wasted too many times before.
You start sentences with, “I remember when we didn’t even think about bowl games …” and finish them with, “Really think we should book a rental car?”
It’s been Team Rodgers vs. the world in Corvallis this season. And Oregon’s ride has been a wild one, week to week, low to high to low to high again. But it’s the stuff of old Greek mythology for all of us now, because this feels headed somewhere preordained and delicious.
It will not be a Civil Bore.
Let’s see. Oregon beat USC, which lost to Stanford, which lost to Oregon State. The Beavers lost to Arizona, which lost to Cal on Saturday and hosts Oregon this week. The Beavers, who are embarking on their typical late-inning act, now play Washington State, which isn’t a bye week, but it’s close. Which is only to say that the Ducks and Beavers feel as though they’re headed to a monumental meeting at Autzen.
Everyone on both sides keeps saying things such as, “We control our destiny now,” but it feels more like the path has been decided and we might as well all head to Eugene for that 113th Civil War, where it will be resolved.
Let the debate begin. Who’s better: Jacquizz Rodgers or LaMichael James? Sean Canfield or Jeremiah Masoli? And the two head coaches — Mike Riley and Chip Kelly — who have done the best 1-2 coaching job the state has ever seen, who would you take in a single game that feels so big?
Oregon State was 8 for 13 on third downs against the Huskies. The Beavers were 6 for 6 in red-zone scoring chances. And if Oregon State defensive lineman Stephen Paea isn’t quietly the conference’s most dominant defensive player, I don’t know who is.
With 54 seconds left in Saturday’s game at Reser Stadium, Locker threw a meaningless touchdown pass. The Huskies band played their fight song. The OSU band picked up their instruments and played right back. Nobody in the stadium could make out much of one or the other. It was all the competition left.
You’re going to be told that everything is up in the air today. That things are undecided. And, yes, there’s a big game for both programs next week against an out-of-state opponent, but what’s more apparent is that you had this coming after the Toilet Bowl, after decades in which you didn’t dare to dream, or even make it to the football game.
Consider that Oregon and Oregon State have met 112 times, and only twice before (2000, 2008) have both participants been ranked in the Top 25 when they walked onto the field.
Schroeder, Register Guard
They’re well-drilled, these Ducks. Clever, these Beavers.
I took in a doubleheader Saturday, just for fun. And also, to ask some very important questions related to a rivalry and the Rose Bowl.
No one answered. They’re too tough to crack. And yeah, we’re about a week early.
But wrap your mind around this tantalizing thought: If (when) Oregon beats Arizona, we’ll have a Civil War of the Roses.
“I can’t go there for you,” Oregon tight end Ed Dickson said. “I can say it’s a goal, and that’s all I’ll say.”
Oregon State walloped Washington 48-21. Oregon followed with a 44-21 win over Arizona State that was over by halftime.
Add the scores from elsewhere — starting with the biggie: surging Stanford 55, tail-spinning USC 21 — and the Pac-10 picture has begun to clear. We could be looking, on Dec. 3, at something we’ve seen only twice in modern history:
Ducks vs. Beavers. Winner to Pasadena.
“If that’s the way it pans out,” Oregon State quarterback Sean Canfield said, “that will be huge.”
What everyone’s not saying was obvious, anyway. The way both teams played Saturday, huge is on the horizon.
I went to both games — lunch in Corvallis, dinner in Eugene — because let’s face it, even if the Beavers and Ducks won’t: What we’ve got here are two very good teams, hurtling toward a terrific collision.
“We’re in the race to win next week, that’s what we’re in the race for,” OSU’s Mike Riley said.
It’s what he has to say. But the Beavers will beat Washington State easily, because that’s what everyone does. They’ll arrive at Autzen Stadium with goals intact.
The Ducks draw a more difficult assignment, at Arizona. But the Wildcats didn’t look great Saturday in a loss at Cal, and it’s fair to wonder whether they’re playing at the same level as Oregon, OSU and Stanford (not necessarily in that order).
A word on Stanford: The Cardinal’s late surge is impressive, sure. The win over Oregon wasn’t an aberration. But it won’t matter.
The champion will be decided in the Willamette Valley, on a cold night in early December.
“That makes for a huge stage,” Canfield said. “A great football environment.”
Here’s why it’s OK for fans, at least, to start setting the stage:
It’s November, and as usual, the Beavers are suddenly very good, even if they’re going about it a bit differently than normal. This time, the defense is average. But the offense, led by Canfield and the Rodgers brothers, is balanced and very dangerous.
It all adds up to considerably more than you’d expect, just from looking at them.
“They don’t wow you when they walk out of the locker room,” Washington coach Steve Sarkisian said. “They just do things right.”
Which, until last week at Stanford, was what Oregon had been doing. While it mattered Saturday, the Ducks got back to business.
They put on their customary highflying offensive act, and it didn’t matter that Arizona State had those gaudy defensive statistics. They shredded the Sun Devils anyway.
By halftime, it was 31-7, could have been worse, and the only lingering question was whether a certain reserve running back would play.
He didn’t.
LeGarrette Blount’s return remains on hold, mostly because of a sloppy second half. The Ducks never quite put away the Sun Devils.
But there shouldn’t be concern. The Ducks looked like the guys who won seven straight. Good enough to beat anybody, any night.
We haven’t forgotten what happened in Tucson two years ago, when a lesser Arizona team derailed the Ducks’ big plans.
No one has forgotten what happened last week, either.
And heck, you had Saturday’s results in Berkeley and Los Angeles, too. No one’s about to get overconfident.
“What we’re all seeing,” Riley said, “is the nature of our conference right now. It’s a hard world.”
But if the Ducks win in the desert — and after the Beavers win in Pullman — we can forget all the talk of tiebreakers, and never mind what Stanford does.
The format is simple. Civil War for it all. Winner vs. Ohio State in the Rose Bowl.
Wrap your mind around the idea. Savor it today. Got it? OK, now Beaver fans, keep savoring.
And Ducks: Go win.
