With Oregon’s loss in Week 12, the Pac-12 can only look at the Week 13 USA Today poll and the Week 13 AP Poll and wonder what might have been or hope for enough upsets to elevate Stanford back into BCS National Championship Game contention.
College Football Standings: Pac-12 Championship Game Could Feature UCLA, Somehow
But there’s plenty of intrigue left in the conference, almost all of it centered on the Pac-12 South.
The Pac-12 North will send either Oregon or Stanford to the inaugural Pac-12 Championship Game; if the Ducks beat Oregon State in Week 13, they will go, but if they lose to the Beavers, they will allow the Cardinal to play for the conference title despite whipping them on the road. Stanford’s completed its Pac-12 slate with an 8-1 record, while Oregon will be either 8-1 with a tiebreaker advantage over Stanford or 7-2 and in second place in the North after this Week 13.
The Pac-12 South is even weirder. USC is far and away the division leader at 6-2 in Pac-12 play, but the Trojans aren’t eligible for the Pac-12 Championship Game. That means that UCLA is technically the leader at this point at 5-3 in conference, with only USC remaining.
If the Bruins beat USC, they win the South outright, and not just technically; if they lose, Arizona State could still head to the Pac-12 Championship Game, in a scenario that involves a three-way tie between the Sun Devils, Bruins, and Utah Utes that would give Arizona State the South title because of their better divisional record.
Of course, in that scenario, USC would have “won” the South by two games. But no one said college football had to make sense.
For more on the Pac-12, head to Pacific Takes.
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