The 2014 Pac-12 season was so utterly nutty that the competitiveness and quality of the division were almost overlooked.
Almost.
Some will say the Pac-12 South eclipsed the SEC West last year as the toughest division in college football — not on a long-term basis, but within the workings of the 2014 season. Plenty of people in the Southeastern United States will disagree.
At a certain point, the “Who’s better?” debate diminishes in importance, because the closeness between the two divisions last season rates as a story in itself. The Pac-12 South certainly belonged at the same table with the SEC West; which division sat at the head of the table? You can figure that one out yourselves. I don’t much care.
What’s particularly fascinating about the Pac-12 South in 2015 is that as deep and as balanced as it appears to be, with Colorado representing the only weak sister in the bunch, the wild-card element hanging over the division is the “crazy factor.” Are we going to have a season that was as batspit loony as 2014 was?
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How unhinged was the 2014 Pac-12 South season? First off, two Hail Mary plays decided it… or at least, that’s a reasonable interpretation. The real heart of the insanity of the 2014 Pac-12 South lay in the contention that one Hail Mary wasn’t even a Hail Mary… because it was so easily snagged by the offensive team, with a minor-to-nonexistent challenge by the defense:
Have you ever seen a less-contested “Hail Mary” in your life. Sun Devils — being Devils, of course — could say, quite convincingly, that Jaelen Strong’s winning catch against USC was not a prayer. Devils don’t pray, right? Leave that one to the Christians.
Yep, that was the 2014 Pac-12 South for ya.
Here was the “classic” Hail Mary, which gave the division two ludicrous endings to games last season:
The Arizona Wildcats pulled that win out of their rear end, and they also won a game in 2014 in which the Washington Huskies pulled a Joe Pisarcik, fumbling when all they had to do to win the game was take a few knees in the final two minutes in Tucson (and punt with around 10 seconds left). Chris Petersen has forgotten more about football than all of us will ever know, and he stubbornly stood by his decision days and weeks after the fact.
Yet, he was loud wrong, and remains so today. Because of Petersen’s decision and a Washington fumble, Arizona recorded a second win that was a 49 on a Harry Houdini scale of 1 to 10. The Wildcats needed the kinds of breaks that have gone against them throughout the years in order to win a first division championship and make their way to the Fiesta Bowl.
They also needed UCLA — the true spiritual successor to Clemson (which is now a responsible program, one which achieves at a level it should; retire “Clemsoning” this year) — to slip on the ol’ banana peel at home against a mediocre Stanford side in the final game preceding the Pac-12 title tilt.
That UCLA team, which spit the bit against Stanford, ran wild against Arizona State in Tempe but couldn’t handle Utah at home. Arizona State’s offense played far worse against Utah than it did against UCLA, but because Utah’s offense (and coaching staff) took the night off in Sun Devil Stadium, ASU was able to beat the Utes in overtime.
If you wanted clean, linear, logical outcomes in the Pac-12 South last year, you didn’t get them. When a division is that screwy, and reveals a landscape so fully littered with ridiculous plot twists, exactly how is one supposed to make a clear prediction for the following season?
Who’s going to be the winner of the Pac-12 South this year? The best answer is not a school. Chaos is the frontrunner in this cluttered, noisy, and highly competitive corner of the college football world.
Fasten your seat belts, and take your motion sickness medication or Rescue Remedy now.