(10-14-2018, 12:47 PM)2006alum Wrote: Well said Bos, agree on all fronts. How do we benefit from having a "doormat" for a rival? I want to beat up on good teams where the wins mean something and the conference gets respect. I fear the real possibility we could end the regular season with only 1 or 2 teams ranked in the top 25. As it is, in the AP we have 3 and the third is WSU at 25th...
I think this is one of those thoughts that becomes more relevant if, say, we were 6-0 with 2-3 wins over creampuffs. Then we could compare ourselves to teams like UCF and wonder just how good we really are. And we could complain about lack of respect for the conference.
It's always hard to say if the "traditional" lack of respect shown the Pac-12 is due to 1) our 9-game conference schedule, causing us to beat up on each other one more time than some other conferences; 2) relative lack of exposure to the East Coast media due to the time zone difference and the TV money forcing us to play at night more often than not; 3) overall OOC performance and SOS (I don't have data on this); 4) this is a down year for the conference overall; 5) no "super" teams this year in the conference (i.e. too much parity); or 6) all of the above.
Re #5, a lot of us can remember when the conference seemed to be U$C and the 7 (or 9) dwarfs. Had there been playoffs back in those days, I'm sure $C would have been there often. And the feeling some of us have that beating $C means more than beating other "rivals" stems from those days.
Of course, W's and L's are the first measure of performance, but SOS doesn't seem to be helping our reputation much. A bad home loss wipes away a lot of good stuff.
FYI this week the two ESPN gurus, Sherman and Bonagura, currently have U-Dub and Oregon vying for a Rose Bowl slot vs Michigan. One of them picks Stanford for the Vegas Bowl, and the other has us going to the Cheez-it Bowl (I kid you not). That translates to 6th or 7th in the conference, behind Rose, Alamo, Sun, Holiday, and Chicken, ouch.