Picking the Pac

Hello Followers.  Hope you all had a fantastic weekend.

Well, as today’s header indicates, today represents the glorious day of revealing the picks for our official, Pac-12 media day ballot.

We bring our (meaning mine) official picks to you today so you can begin to fire up your own respective rebuttal shuttles…

We also bring our official picks to you today so my good friends in the Media have a set of picks that they can later call their own (no need to thank me fellas, I already know).

Then, throughout the week, the rest of the Blogfathers will weigh in with their picks–and hopefully so will you!

So, without further ado, I humbly ask to you to join me in clicking on the old jumperoo.

********

Followers, before we get to the actual picks, a word or two about the old methodology.

First, as I noted in the the “Battle for the Basement” post from last week, the common approach to picking the Pac has been to rank teams simply based on who you think is best.

But, for this year–and in the years to come–the scheduling of different conference opponents between teams–combined with differences in non-conference scheduling, different number of home-away games, etc–makes that approach a bit naïve in my book.

So, my picks are based on actually going through and picking each game (for each team)–taking into account how I think certain game outcomes (including non-conference losses–or lack thereof) may affect particular teams as the season unfolds.

The result of this llllllllonnnnggg drawn out process is what you will see below. And frankly, the results are quite different than what I would have come up with had I just ranked who I thought was best.

So, let’s head to the South first, shall we?:

A few surprises here—even for me.  Arizona State is probably not a shocker—but perhaps their overall record is.  And the reason:  Their schedule is PERFECT.  All big games are at home, no non-conference stumbling blocks, and on paper, a very, very easy home stretch.  Originally, I had them pegged at 8-1 and 11-1, but I don’t believe that Dennis is a good enough coach to pull that off, so I tagged them with another L.

Beyond ASU, I think Utah and Arizona will be right there for the Division crown down the stretch, while I think the two LA schools are going to struggle. USC, in particular, has a really, really tough opening slate of conference games.  And, if they stumble against Utah or Arizona—which I suspect they will—I expect them to lay down a little. Hence the sub-.500 conference mark.

Now, onto the North:

Probably, not much a huge surprise here, but a few things worth noting. First of all, in spite of picking them to win the North Division, I think Stanford holds a lot of promise for being a real bust this year—Andrew Luck notwithstanding.

Personally, I’m banking on the idea that those three years of top 15 recruiting classes are going to keep the Cardinal strong throughout the year.  And, as you can see by my standings, I think the Cards are going to get the Quack ON GRASS in Palo Alto in November—allowing them to meet with ASU in the first Pac-12 championship game!

As you can also see, I’m picking the Ducks to lose that opener at LSU, although I will be rooting HARD for them to give the new Pac-12 some much needed national credibility.

Beyond the top two, I keep coming back to Washington as the only other North team that I think has a legit chance at cracking 8 wins this year.  And that is the reason why it is that I have them third—although I had somewhat of a hard time finding that fifth conference win for them.

And yes, I have the Cougs coming in fourth.   The reason:  In the end, I think we’re going to be able to score enough points consistently to put up 3 W’s in conference play.  And just so you know, at this point, I have us beating Colorado, Oregon State, and Utah.

Outside of the Cougs, I have the Beavs essentially tying us for fourth with CAL being solidly in the cellar.  Like SC, I think I could really be missing the boat with the Bears, but I just don’t like them offensively, and I haven’t seen enough grit out of that program to have any type of confidence that they’ll keep pushing if they get knocked down and/or back early.  On top of that, I don’t think that playing away from Berkeley for the entire year is going to help Tedford’s boys at all.

So, there you have it, the official media day ballot from the WSU Football Blog.  “We” will have a more specific appraisal on our team’s 2011-2012 prospects once Fall camp is well underway.

All for now.

Go Cougs!