Saturday Night Five: The Big Four roll, quantifying Pac-12 improvement and atrocious officiating

Instant reaction to Pac-12 developments on the field …

1. Parity is dead (and that’s a good thing)

The Pac-12 spent years turning its eat-your-own tendencies into an art form.

While all the parity created #Pac12AfterDark thrills and loads of upsets, it was the worst possible scenario for producing top-10 showdowns, Heisman Trophy contenders, New Year’s Six at-large bids and College Football Playoff invitations.

The Big Four are 15-0 against the other eight teams after a Week Nine sweep:

— USC won at Arizona without star receiver Jordan Addison and a slew of starters.

— Utah won at Washington State without quarterback Cam Rising.

— Oregon hammered Cal, a traditional nemesis.

As a result, the Pac-12 will emerge from October with four teams in the top half of the AP poll, three teams alive in the CFP race, two contenders for the Heisman (quarterbacks Caleb Williams of USC and Bo Nix of Oregon) and one monumental Saturday on the horizon.

If the Big Four keep winning, Nov. 19 looms as one the most significant days of the expansion era with Utah visiting Oregon and the L.A. schools colliding.

2. Details, details

How much better is the quality of play in the Pac-12 this season compared to last year? Glad you asked.

Through nine weeks of play …

— Teams with fewer than three losses
2021: 1 (Oregon)
2022: 6 (Oregon, Oregon State, UCLA, USC, Utah and Washington)

— Teams ranked in the AP poll
2021: 1 (Oregon)
2022: 4 (Oregon, UCLA, USC and Utah)

— Bowl-eligible teams
2021: 1 (Oregon)
2022: 6 (Oregon, Oregon State, UCLA, USC, Utah and Washington)

— Losses to Group of Five and FCS teams
2021: 11
2022: 2

— Teams averaging at least 35 points per game 
2021: 1 (Oregon)
2022: 5 (Oregon, UCLA, USC, Utah and Washington)

Had you mapped a best-case scenario for the conference back in August, it would have included all the elements listed above: powerhouse offenses, a paucity of bad losses, a slew of highly-ranked teams, several high-profile showdowns and a shot at the CFP as November arrived.

That is not the formula we’re used to seeing from the Pac-12.

3. The bottom feeders

Given the zero-sum nature of competition, a strong top naturally requires a weak bottom — and that’s exactly what the standings reveal.

Last year at this time, only two teams (Arizona and Colorado) had more than two losses in conference play.

This season? Here’s the bottom tier:

WSU: 1-4
Arizona: 1-4
Cal: 1-4
Colorado: 1-4
Stanford: 1-5

Each team has a clear weakness that repeatedly undermines success.

Arizona’s defense is awful. Stanford, Cal and Washington State are struggling on offense, and Colorado is bad every which way.

Not since the 2016 season have four teams finished conference play with records of 2-7 or worse.

It’s no coincidence that 2016 was the last year the Pac-12 placed five teams in the final AP poll.

Parity is bad for ratings, rankings and recognition.

4. CFP rankings outlook

The first College Football Playoff rankings will be revealed Tuesday, and we fully expect the Pac-12 to be well-represented.

Utah assuredly will be included but, with two losses, has no chance to qualify for the CFP. However, all three of the one-loss teams (UCLA, USC and Oregon) are still alive.

How do we know?

Over the course of eight years, only one Power Five champion with a 12-1 record has been snubbed by the playoff selection committee: Ohio State in 2018.

Until every team in the Pac-12 is carrying at least two losses, the conference has a chance to break the five-year CFP drought.

The issue of greatest intrigue for the Hotline on Tuesday is how the committee will handle Oregon (7-1), which lost to Georgia by 46 points but has looked like a playoff-caliber team since the opener.

Also, where will the committee place UCLA (7-1), which lost decisively to Oregon and played an ultra-soft non-conference schedule?

And what about USC (7-1), which lost at Utah by one point, does not play Oregon and owns exactly zero wins over teams in the current AP poll?

We expect the Ducks to be the highest-ranked of the foursome, but will they crack the top 10?

5. The final word

And that word is: officiating.

It stinks.

The Hotline defended Pac-12 officiating for most of the past season-and-a-half because the product had improved markedly from the pre-COVID era, when egregious gaffes made headlines far too often under a different conference administration.

But we cannot defend the officiating over the past month. It has been an embarrassment that must be fixed quickly.

And to be clear: Our focus isn’t on the judgment calls (roughing the passer, personal fouls, pass interference) that are the source of outrage in every conference. Just ask Alabama fans — or Nick Saban himself — about a pass interference call in the final minutes of the loss to Tennessee.

Instead, our beef is with the operational aspects of the job.

Pac-12 officials forgot a second down in the Washington State-Oregon game.

They whistled a play dead too soon in the Arizona-Washington game.

They signaled an inadvertent stoppage of play at the end of the Utah-USC thriller that gave the Trojans five extra seconds. (Imagine if USC had used that time to win the game!)

And tonight, in Tucson, referee Michael Mothershed and his crew completely botched the end of the first half, allowing the clock to start before the ball was spotted — thus leaving the Trojans without time to run a final play near the goal line.

How that could happen, we cannot fathom. Lincoln Riley was furious, as he should have been.

Not even the Pac-12 Networks broadcast crew could offer a reasonable defense.

It was an inexcusable mistake — another inexcusable mistake — that demands an explanation from the conference office.

At this rate, the officiating gaffes, not the teams’ success, will become the story of the Pac-12 season.

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