Thursday night in the ironically-named Valley of the Sun, Oregon and Arizona State will play a game which starts at roughly 10:35 p.m. Eastern time.
This is, of course, the time slot for #Pac12AfterDark, a hashtag meant to capture the wackiness of the league which plays when much of America goes to sleep… especially on a school night. Yet, “Pac-12 After Dark” is only part of the darkness covering the conference this year. The Pac-12 is shrouded in darkness in another equally profound sense: We are completely in the dark in terms of understanding how good its teams might be.
The final days of October are upon us, and the Pac-12 needs a few teams to bust through walls of inconsistency if the league’s reputation is to remain strong. The Pac-12 fought the SEC on relatively even terms in 2014, but without a big stretch run, the West’s Power 5 league is going to suffer in the offseason.
Oregon and Arizona State both exemplify the elusiveness of consistent quality for the Pac-12 in 2015. They will both try to score an important win on Thursday in the desert — that must be their first concern — but for national observers of the sport, it’s important that the winner look really good.
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Los Angeles might be the most image-conscious city in the country, and with USC and UCLA both struggling to a considerable degree, the Pac-12’s national profile hasn’t received a boost from its most visible programs. Yet, the pattern of the Pac failing to put on its Saturday best has not been limited to Southern California. Oregon thought that its back-loaded schedule would be rough (the Ducks face Cal, USC and Stanford in the coming weeks), but Mark Helfrich’s team has already picked up three losses, two of them in league home games against teams it would have thumped in the Marcus Mariota era.
Oregon is highly unlikely to beat Stanford in November, but if the Ducks are able to rebound against the Cardinal, this game against Arizona State acquires supreme importance and centrality. If Oregon can avoid losing before Stanford, a win over the Cardinal would force Stanford to beat a Cal team which — for all its warts and weaknesses — is better than it was a season ago. Let’s say Stanford loses. Stranger things have happened in nearly 150 years of college football history. Oregon could steal the Pac-12 North. It’s not likely, no, but that’s what the Ducks are playing for in Tempe on Thursday: the right to have a chance to make Stanford sweat.
Let’s say that Stanford swats away Oregon, however. It’s something we won’t know for a few more weeks, but let’s bring up the issue. Why should you care about Ducks-Devils in the desert?
Very simply, if Stanford or Utah finishes 12-1, you need to know if the Pac-12 champion would deserve a spot in the College Football Playoff. That’s really where this game becomes meaningful — not in terms of the aspirations of UO and ASU, which have just about been exhausted, but in terms of measuring the whole of the Pac-12, a league which is still an unknown quantity as November nears.
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Follow the bouncing ball in terms of possible end-of-season scenarios:
If Ole Miss loses and the SEC puts forth a 12-1 LSU or Alabama team as its champion; if the Big 12 champion finishes 12-1; Clemson goes unbeaten; and Ohio State goes unbeaten as well, would a 12-1 Pac-12 champion make the playoff? Let’s throw in another plot twist: What if 12-1 Utah is the Pac-12 champion, and Notre Dame finishes at 11-1 after beating Stanford in Game 12 of its season, which doesn’t have a 13th (conference championship) contest.
Can the Pac-12 get its seat at the playoff table? That’s a tough call.
On merit, the league might have a case, but politically, you know that it would be hard to keep the SEC and Big 12 champions out — the SEC because of the league’s clout and TV presence, the Big 12 because of the controversy flowing from last year’s exclusion of both Baylor and TCU. The Pac-12 needs a 12-1 champion, and it needs that champion to look as good as possible.
THAT, folks, is why the winner of this game needs to look impressive. That’s why the Pac-12’s third through eighth teams need to clean up nicely and make an attractive presentation to the CFB Playoff Selection Committee over the next 37 days.
Oregon-Arizona State — sure, it’s not a game with immediate conference championship implications. It’s not a game being contested by teams in the top tiers of their respective divisions. Yet, it’s still a window into the Pac-12’s true identity in 2015… an identity shrouded in mediocrity and cloaked in darkness through the first two months of the season.
Month number three needs to be different. Thursday night would provide a much-needed boost to the conference’s image.
