PAC-10: The Merry-Go-Round of Inferiority

Although this post lacks the parody-like nature that you are accustomed to, this falls into the "plenty of irish love" category, and I feel that it is necessary to get a few words out there...

Those of you that know a Pac-10 fan, you know that they are "beautiful individual" (Lou Holtz reference to Mark May during the ND football banquet) and you also know that they are one of those people who has been having the wool pulled over their eyes by the Pac-10 by being made to think that they are a reputable conference. However, last time I checked, having only one football team that can win in your conference didn't exactly turn you into a "power division." Just for fun... lets look at a few things...

Pac 10 record against top 25 teams: 4 - 25.... granted, Ty did his part in racking up those losses, but are you kidding me - TWENTY FIVE LOSSES. And i have news for you, USC has three of those wins; but perhaps it takes away a little when we see that 3 of those 4 wins have been against pac-10 teams that shouldn't be in the top 25 anyway (USC over ranked Oregon, USC over ranked UCLA, and Arizona over ranked UCLA)

In fact, to make it simple, here is AN ALL INCLUSIVE LIST of non-Pac-10 Top 25 Teams that the Pac-10 was able to beat this year:
1) USC over Notre Dame...

that is all

So what you are telling me, is that you have a power conference because one of the best teams of alleged college lore was able to get flat out, out played and win a football game by LUCK in the last :07 seconds? - There i said it!

See, the problem with the pac-10 is that everybody sucks, save for one team. However, don't get me wrong, they all suck equally though. There is no logical connection within the conference... eg. UCLA beats Cal, Cal beats Zona, then Zona beats UCLA... now this has been going on all year long but none of "experts" seem to realize it.... now in evaluating how good a team is you can pretty much do it on two levels. One you can sit down and watch every gut-wrenching, boring pac-10 game that is on TV because you live on the west coast and that is the only option you have and you can actually see that they are not good teams just in the way that they flat out objectively play... or you can do what I call the "ESPN Method" and just look at what a couple numbers say on the paper you are reading... eg. "Oregon has one loss, Notre Dame has 2, Oregon should go to the BCS." - Tony Cornheiser (PTI)... while we're at it, lets send TCU (only one loss) to the BCS bowl Tony... the fact of the matter is, is if you want to evaluate a team using the "ESPN Method" you need to take a look at the numbers in the context in which they lie... now everybody knows that when you conduct an experiment, it is always proper to have a "control" experiment and a "variable" experiment. The variable is the one that you are testing, but it doesn't mean anything unless you have a proper control to compare it to. That means, that if you are going to look strictly at the numbers and use the "ESPN Method" you should also make sure that there is a proper variable in your experiment. See the problem with the Pac-10 is that it isn't using any "variable" in the experiment. It only has a control - and that is the pac-10 playing each other and nobody else. So from this experiment, we know that the pac-10 can beat up on each other pretty good; however, we can't measure the strength of their football programs if they choose only to play this "round-robin" like season against one another only. We need to see a variable, such as scheduling a non-conference game maybe against Florida, Miami, at least even or Pittsburgh please.

Instead here are the non-conference teams that they selected:

Arizona: Utah, North Arizona, Purdue (and they got schlacked)

Oregon: Houston, Montana, Fresno (who are these teams)

UCLA: San Diego State, Rice, Oklahoma

Cal: dear Lord Sacramento State, Illinois, New Mexico St.

Arizona State: Temple, LSU (who they lost to), Northwestern

Stanford: Navy, UC Davis (D 1-AA team they lost to), ND

Oregon St: PORTLAND ST!!!, Boise St, Louisville (thank you - btw State, you got dominated in this one)

Washington St: IDAHO, Nevada, GRAM ST (do they even have football teams?)

Washington: Air Force, IDAHO, ND

And then

USC: Hawaii, Arkansas, ND, Fresno

Okay, so what we have here is Pac-10 teams that schedule very, very weak non-conference games and the semi-tough ones that they do schedule (ND, LSU, Lousiville) they get a well deserved beating handed to them.

Now, one of those beautiful Pac-10 individuals, perhaps a lowly Ducks fan before packing his bags for San Diego for his lovely pre-New Years Holiday Bowl will likely say… “oh yea ND, well we killed Stanford, and you only barely beat them.”…. wow… isn’t that so cute. I think I remember having an argument like that before when I was on the swing set during recess in 1^st grade. Now in addressing just one of these lovely Pac-10 arguments, it is important to note that this method of arguing is circular and leads to no affirmative conclusions (eg. ND barely got by Stanford who Oregon whalloped... yet they fail to take into consideration that Oregon barely beat Arizona (by 3 points) who had lost to Stanford earlier in the year. So first off, anyone who tries to argue through disjunctive syllogisms (look it up Oregon fans) in sports would probably be best apt to do it back on the playground at Windom Elementary (I’ll give you directions if you need them). If history has taught us 2 things they are as follows:

1) the Holocaust was a bad thing, and
2) Using logically premised syllogisms to express the quality of a sports
team simply DO NOT work.... especially when the Pac-10 is concerned (See above analysis).

So in conclusion, the Pac-10 sucks (except for USC) and their records are grossly inflated because they are not tested outside their already terrible conference, so if you want to play the "ESPN Method", you must look at the context of the numbers, because numbers will lie to you... right TCU?

Skylar Novak is currently a failing law student because he spends all his time writing about college football and manipulating the minds of young ladies at the bar. His views and expressions in no way shape or represent the views of FirstandGold but he can be reached at firstandgold@gmail.com