Pac 10 Recap, week 12, 2010

By this time in the season, things in the Pac 10 should be pretty clear.  Most teams are who we think they are by now.  We know who is good, we know who isn't so good, we know who's lousy.  Bowl games are pretty close to being settled on, and only a few things here and there need to be settled.  This season...not so much.  For example, Oregon wins their next two games, they're in the National Championship game (woo!).  They lose their next two, they probably play in the Holiday Bowl (boooo!).  Right now, only three teams are eligible for bowl games (Stanford, Oregon, Arizona).  If Oregon State wins one more game, they go to a bowl game.  Washington and UCLA need to win out to go to a bowl, Cal needs to win 1 (at Washington) to go to a bowl.  ASU, even if they finish with six wins, won't go to a bowl game because they have two wins against Division II teams, and only one of those count (last recap I think I referenced that ASU still had bowl-hopes, but I was wrong...which increases my wrong rate to close to 90%).  It's ridiculous how up in the air everything is right now, and there's only a few more weeks left.

Guess what I'm trying to say is...the Pac 10 gives me a headache.  Have I mentioned that already?

Onward 

You know what USC Trojans hate?  Shrimp.  Also, Corvallis.  Since 2006, it's been pretty much a guarantee...Trojans come to lovely, wonderful, orangey Corvallis and they get boat-raced.  Two years ago, it was the Jacquizz Rodgers, Who the Hell is the Shrimpy Guy? Show.  This year, OSU has definitely not lived up to expectations, and the Trojans, well, everyone knows what's up with them.  Still, Beaver Nation, the unbelievably annoyingly-named fan base, wasn't feeling so good about the outcome of this one.  But even before Trojan starting QB Matt Barkely went down with an injury, this was a rout, as OSU beat the snot out of USC, 36-7.  I am not nearly smart enough to figure out why the Trojans come to Corvallis and lose every time (or at least the last three times), I just know that the happiest people in the world are probably USC fans, since the Trojans don't come back to Corvallis until 2013, because of the new weird Pac 12 conference schedule.  And I have no clue what this says about the Beavers.  They've lost to bad teams in the Pac 10 and beat good ones.  They beat Stanford at Stanford next week and holy crap the Civil War is gonna be more stressful than, I imagine, the actual Civil War was.  Or at least, AS stressful.  Probably.

Six teams in the Pac 10 played last weekend and three of them got crushed.  USC, above, and also Cal, who, after a big game against Oregon, almost pulling off the upset, had to be feeling good about Stanford, until the game started, and then not so much.  Cal was the crushee, losing the Stanford 48-14.  I think it's safe to say that Cal, despite the close game against Oregon, just isn't that good.  However, they do have Handsome Brock Mansion as their quarterback.  With a name like Brock Mansion, you know that he's handsome.  He has to be.  I imagine that Brock Mansion will finish his college career, handsomely, and then instantly go into acting, landing a plum role on one of the few remaining daytime soap operas, playing, you guessed it, Brock Mansion.

So UCLA.  Ugh.  A chance to go to sucky Washington and solidify yourselves as a bowl-bound team.  Or, the Bruins could choose to get beat by the Huskies 24-7.  UCLA, naturally, went with option B.  "Golden Boy" Jake Locker threw for 68 dynamic yards; the two teams combined for 15 penalties for 165 total yards (in fact, the Bruins had 163 total yards of offense (and used THREE quarterbacks) and had 99 total yards in penalties.  So through the miracle of math, UCLA had only 64 yards of going forward offense.  Which is awesome).  Speaking of the three quarterbacks for UCLA, they went a COMBINED 6 of 25 for 55 passing yards and 3 interceptions.  Also awesome.  Remember when Neuheisel came to UCLA and everyone thought it'd just be a matter of time before they were just as good as USC and he was an offensive guru and he'd groom quarterbacks to play in the NFL and how they have genius Rich Cho as their offensive coordinator and UCLA was gonna be awesome?  This is definitely not the awesome they had in mind, I'm thinking.

Oregon, Arizona State, Washington State and Arizona all had byes.

Shout Outs

Notre Dame can beat Army, that's for sure.  They did it again this year, this time in Yankee Stadium (for some reason...in fact, two college football games were held in Major League baseball stadiums, but unlike Wrigley, Yankee stadium was big enough for a whole football field).  Anyway, Irish beat Army 27-3 and are now bowl eligible.  One more win and they're 7 and 5 and I assume, will play in a BCS bowl.  If they lose, and are only 6-6, I'm guessing they take their ball and go home, much like the grumpy pants did last year.

Recapper's Pac 10 Power Rankings

1.        Oregon – Two wins away from National Championship.  I'm officially nervous
2.        Stanford – As one of my co-workers said, the best 1 loss team in the country
3.        Arizona - The only other Pac 10 team officially in a bowl game
4.        OSU - Up and down season, up and down my rankings
5.        USC - Definitively a middle of the pack team
6.        Cal - Because the teams after them suck more
7.        Washington - A big jump, completely arbitrary, but they could go to a bowl still  
8.        UCLA - A hot mess, but could still eek out a bowl
9.        ASU - Out of the bowl hunt, but could still make it to .500.  Could Erickson really be back next year?
10.        WSU - Bad

Ass Hander's Award

Last week, the Beavers won the award for getting throttled at home by WSU.  This week, the Beavers cause USC to "win" it by throttling the Trojans at home.  If that doesn't sum up this season, I don't now what does.