All hail the mighty Pac-10

On the USC football team’s official blog, Ben Malcolmson goes there:

Stanford’s loss to California on Saturday further muddied the Pac-10 race and also caused several people to scratch their heads in confusion.

What is going on in this conference?

USC beats California by 27 points, Stanford beats USC by 34 points and then Cal goes out and beats Stanford by 6 — in Palo Alto? What a wacky season this has become along the Left Coast, where six teams are within two games of the conference lead and strange occurrences happen on a weekly basis.

The tight race and regular oddities might be a result of the all-around excellence of the conference. The strength of the Pac-10 could be unprecedented this year, as it’s rated No. 1 by Jeff Sagarin and seven teams — 70 percent of the conference — are already bowl eligible. …

You know, it looks and plays a lot like the NFL, where the perceived great teams are never shoe-ins for wins and parity rules the roost. … [T]he hottest teams are just 60 minutes away from dropping way down the standings and getting their Rose Bowl dreams crushed. Call it parity or across-the-board strength, but the Pac-10 has inarguably been a wild race this season.

It’s a WAAAARRR!!!!!!!

He’s right, though — or at least, he’s more right (this year) than the SEC worshippers who constantly claim that their favorite conference is the “toughest from top to bottom” because you “can’t take a week off” or somebody will rise up and beat you. That hasn’t really been true in the SEC in 2009, but it has been true in the Pac-10, or at least the Pac-9 (minus Wazzu).

By the way, you want further proof of how wild the Pac-10 is? If Oregon State beats Oregon next Thursday, they’ll go to the Rose Bowl. If they lose, the Beavers will probably fall all the way to… the Las Vegas Bowl! That’s the fifth-choice Pac-10 bowl, but with a four-way tie for second place likely among USC, Stanford, Cal and Oregon State in this scenario (assuming USC beats UCLA & Arizona, and Cal beats Washington), the second-choice Holiday Bowl can pick whichever of the tied teams it prefers, as can the third-choice Sun Bowl, and so on. The Holiday Bowl would very likely take USC; the Sun Bowl would certainly not take Oregon State, which it took last year, but would instead probably grab Stanford (particularly if the Drunken Trees beat Notre Dame next Saturday); and the Emerald Bowl, which loves the Bay Area teams, would snatch up Cal (or Stanford, if the Sun Bowl takes Cal). That would leave Oregon State, having just barely missed out on a date with Ohio State in Pasadena, heading instead for Las Vegas to play Utah or BYU.

Things are a bit more orderly if Oregon State beats Oregon (again assuming the Trojans win out): Beavers to the Rose Bowl, Ducks to the Holiday Bowl, Trojans to the Sun Bowl, Drunken Trees to the Emerald Bowl, Bears to the Las Vegas Bowl. Arizona is Poinsettia Bowl-bound regardless, unless it can win at ASU and at USC, which is another example of the conference’s craziness: the Wildcats controlled their Rose Bowl destiny until they were eliminated in a double-overtime heartbreaker on Saturday that was witnessed by Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit and a legion of fans ready to rush the field in Tucson. Now, instead of Roses, they’re looking at a much less prestigious flower, Poinsettias, unless they can win two tough road games.