[2006alum]

Recency bias. It was a scant three years ago that Stanford's Rose Bowl opponent had not heard of the star player who's now the center of his NFL team's offense. Remember that kid missed out on college football's highest individual honor because voters outside the region hadn't seen him play? That had nothing whatsoever to do with the strength of the conference and everything to do with the lack of visibility.

Maybe. Or maybe because even that year, we still had the worst conference at the top. Here's the year-end top 25 rankings by conference:
ACC: #2 Clemson, #14 Florida State, #15 UNC (and #11 Notre Dame, sorta)
Big 10: #4 Ohio State, #5 Michigan St, #9 Iowa, #12 Michigan, #21 Wisconsin, #23 Northwestern
Big 12: #5 Oklahoma, #7 TCU, #13 Baylor, #20 Oklahoma State
PAC-12: #3 Stanford, #17 Utah, #20 Oregon
SEC: #1 Alabama (champion), #10 Ole Miss, #16 LSU, #22 Tennessee, #25 Florida


I can't really see an argument for why the Pac-12 isn't the fifth best conference. Every other P5 had more top 25 teams except the ACC, which had higher ranked teams, and we were the only conference not to have a team in the CFP (Clemson, Alabama, Michigan State, Oklahoma).

[2006alum]

Recency bias. It was a scant three years ago that Stanford's Rose Bowl opponent had not heard of the star player who's now the center of his NFL team's offense. Remember that kid missed out on college football's highest individual honor because voters outside the region hadn't seen him play? That had nothing whatsoever to do with the strength of the conference and everything to do with the lack of visibility.

Maybe. Or maybe because even that year, we still had the worst conference at the top. Here's the year-end top 25 rankings by conference:
ACC: #2 Clemson, #14 Florida State, #15 UNC (and #11 Notre Dame, sorta)
Big 10: #4 Ohio State, #5 Michigan St, #9 Iowa, #12 Michigan, #21 Wisconsin, #23 Northwestern
Big 12: #5 Oklahoma, #7 TCU, #13 Baylor, #20 Oklahoma State
PAC-12: #3 Stanford, #17 Utah, #20 Oregon
SEC: #1 Alabama (champion), #10 Ole Miss, #16 LSU, #22 Tennessee, #25 Florida


I can't really see an argument for why the Pac-12 isn't the fifth best conference. Every other P5 had more top 25 teams except the ACC, which had higher ranked teams, and we were the only conference not to have a team in the CFP (Clemson, Alabama, Michigan State, Oklahoma).