Week 10: A Taste of the SEC
13 Saturdays was off the Pac-12 trail this week. However, instead of spending the bye week at home recharging for late season madness, we spent our weekend away from the Conference of Champions getting a taste of Saturday down South with a trip to Athens, Georgia for Auburn-Georgia, the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry.
Needless to say, it was quite the experience. But it's not what this journey is all about. So come back during bowl season for some amazing highlights from the SEC, but there are too many extraordinary stories to be written in the final weeks of this Pac-12 season to turn our attention anywhere else.
1. Colorado could have two of the biggest games of the season on back-to-back Saturdays, with a Thanksgiving feast to replenish in-between. What a treat for the Folsom Faithful, who have suffered through the roughest decade of any Power 5 team.
2. "It's not how you start, it's how you finish." If Mike Leach's Pullman Pirates (I mean Washington State Cougars) run the table to close this season out, we're going to see just how much the CFP committee buys into this coachspeak. If Wazzu pulls out the W over #10 Colorado this weekend, then they'll head home to Pullman to play top-10 UW in what could possibly be the biggest Apple Cup EVER (sidenote: why does Mott's not sponsor this yet?), and if the Cougs pull off an undefeated Pac-12 regular season, they'll get a top-10 Utah or USC in the Pac-12 championship game. I don't care how many points Clemson beats Wake Forest by, if Wazzu pulls that off, they'll have by far the most impressive closing resume of anybody not named Alabama. But could the committee really be spiteful enough to consider a season-opening FCS loss to outweigh that 3 top-10 win finish? Probably, but they shouldn't.
3. USC is the one team in the country that nobody wants any piece of right now. Which really only begs the question, where is Max Browne going to transfer? Seriously though, if Wazzu knocks off the Buffs this weekend, I gotta think the Buffs bounce back to take care of the still-injury-riddled-Utes. A win for the Buffs could put the Trojans in the Pac-12 title game where they'd almost certainly be at least a 7-point favorite over Udub or Wazzu. Meaning that USC could be headed to the Rose Bowl, just like everyone predicted at the end of September.
4. Oh and by the way, it's RIVALRY WEEK. And that's what we'll be soaking in over the next 3 stops. 13 Saturdays will be at LA's Battle for the Victory Bell between USC and UCLA on Saturday, then to Arizona's Territorial Cup fresh out of the Thanksgiving coma, and finally a trip to Corvallis for the Civil War to wrap up the regular season.
While the Rocky Mountain Showdown (Utah vs. Colorado) and the Apple Cup might end up serving as the Pac-12 semifinals this year, its the good ol' fashioned hate of traditional rivalries that make college football gamedays more special than all the rest and that's how were going to close out this regular season - with a deep dive into the invigorating environments created out of the insatiably desperate desire to extinguish the competition you know the best.
