Hello Followers. Hope you’re having a great week.
Well, tonight, our Cougies will try to build on last weekend’s sweep of the Bay Area schools as they take on the Arizona schools.
But, perhaps to your surprise, I’m not going to talk about that today.
In fact, I’m pretty much ready to bet the house that the best basketball coach west of the Mississippi River…..
…is going to take care of our boys with relative ease tonight.
Therefore, rather than talk about hoops, I’m going to talk some more about football.
So, if you want to check out why THE PAC-12 IS TRULY THE FOOTBALL CONFERENCE OF CHAMPIONS…..
(READ ON)
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Followers, I don’t know about you all, but I am absolutely coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs over football right now.
I mean, not only have I been thinking about the Cougs morning noon and night, I’ve also been completely jacked about the NFL playoffs.
And, last week provided a great example of what makes the NFL so darn exciting year in and year out. I mean, not only were the games great, but both of the teams in the NFC championship game didn’t even make the Playoffs the year prior!
So, for me, watching a team like the 49ers make the transition from a 6-10 doormat to a 13-3 POWERHOUSE is one of the factors which make the pro game so darn great.
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And then we have the College Game. To be sure, the SEC has proved itself to be dominant over the past several years, winning the past 5 National Championships.
But just because the SEC has had the best team at the top, doesn’t necessarily make it the best conference. In fact, I would argue that the BEST conference in College Football is the one in which the vast majority of teams have enough of a history to convince future recruits (and fans) that they have a REAL chance to be successful. And, in my view, the best way to do that is to have an established history of success in the not-so-distant past.
So, when you look at the final finish of teams in BCS conferences over the past 15 years (1996-2011), only ONE conference can claim that it has landed ALL OF ITS TEAMS at some time in the final AP Top 10.
And that conference is your Pac-12 conference. Check it out:
# Top 10 Finishes # Top 5 Finishes Highest Final AP Rank
Arizona: 0 1 #4 (1998)
Arizona State: 0 1 #4 (1996)
California: 1 0 #9 (2004)
Colorado: 2 0 #6 (1996)
Oregon: 2 3 #2 (2001)
Oregon State: 0 1 #4 (2000)
Stanford: 1 1 #4 (2010)
UCLA: 1 1 #5 (1997)
USC: 1 7 #1 (2003)
Utah: 0 2 #2 (2008)
Washington: 0 1 #3 (2000)
Washington State: 4 0 #9 (1997, 2003)
So, as the recruiting period ends and preparations officially begin for 2012, we can look back at the past 15 years and know that the Pac-12 is the conference of champions in large part because all of its teams have a history of recent success at the highest levels of college football. In fact, if we include regular season rankings, all Pac-12 teams have spent time in the TOP 5 at some point during that time (including the Cougs!).
What’s more, as Mike Leach gets ready to close the deal,
we all can be proud of the fact that, over the past 15 years, the team with the MOST finishes in the Final AP Top 10 is USC…
….followed by Oregon..
And then YOUR WASHINGTON STATE COUGARS!
(And I found it interesting that the teams with the fewest top 10 finishes were Washington, Oregon State, and the two Arizona schools).
Okay, that’s all for today. We’ll be back in some form tomorrow.
Until then, GO COUGS!
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