Schedule grid

USC has started play already with their "week 0" victory over San Jose State, but the rest of the Pac gets going this coming weekend. Here is a nice concise grid for the season from the Pac12.

The End of the Pac- (fill in the blank #)

Many people are saying that Aug. 4, 2023 is the day that the Pac-12 died. 

I guess if you are being pendantic, you would say June 30, 2022 was the day the "12" died when USC and UCLA announced leaving for the Big-10. But then Colorado decamped for the Big 12 in July of 2023, and today Oregon and Washington made it official about their move to the Big-10 (18 teams). 

So "today" it's the "Pac-7" but by tomorrow it may only be Cal, Stanford, OSU and WSU after the Four Corner schools go to Big-12? 

(Edit: Yes, the rest of the Mountain schools left for the Big 12  later on August 4, 2023 and on September 1, Cal and Stanford left for the ACC, leaving only OSU and WSU)

So what does that mean to this website? and the teams that it tracks in 2024? A lot will happen in the next 12 months but it probably means that the Pac will not really exist in Sept 2024? Does that mean that I will be tracking Mountain West Teams? Or helping track Big-10 teams? Not sure!

My personal opinion—as a Oregon alum, and 30-year Duck and Pac fan— is that the Pac-12 was a great conference and College Football is better off with the more-geographical conferences that put tradition and history and culture first. I get that money matters, and Oregon has been lucky to have plenty of money and success lately, but the losers are the Beavers, Cougars and to some extent the Bears and Cardinal. 

Looking forward to playing some of the Big-10 teams but hoping to keep the Civil War Game and some other west coast games. Maybe at least now our 3-4 "out of conference" games will be against Cal, OSU and WSU rather than PSU and Hawaii?

Bowl Season 2022-23

The pre-New Years bowls showcased the 4 "north" teams going mono, with all four of the Oregon/Washington schools going jersey/pants mono (except for UW gold chrome helmet). The Rose Bowl had Utah using the red version of their throwback set with rose decal on helmet.

Pac All-star Uniform team

With the regular season wrapped up, I thought it would be nice to show you MY favorite single-game looks for each of the 12 teams in 2022. The order is alphabetical by division, so no judgement ranking. (You can check out my ranking of the teams from preseason here) Some of these looks might not have been the best visual matchup with their opponent that day, but rounding those up is another list. In general color is going to be better than white or mono, so in all cases I picked a home look with alternating school colors for these teams, and tradition almost always trumps innovation so my favorites tend to be classic.

California

IMHO, Cal's normal uniforms rely on a too much of a too-dark navy blue (helmet and jersey), so my favorite looks this season were their two throwback sets that utilize a possibly? lighter navy and bright blue and more even use of yellow. The Big Game set and/or Joe Roth set should be their normal uniform.

Pac-12 Championship: Dec 2, 2022

With Oregon losing to OSU and Washington beating WSU, the Utes filled the second spot in Las Vegas, after a convoluted tiebreaker between UO, UW, UU. 

A battle of the two teams that use "red" the best in the Pac-12. But too bad Utah did not go with black helmets to contrast more with USC. 

Interestingly, this is the first year that the North/South divisions were not used to seed the the game. So Washington lost out again ( in 2020 they had Covid). Ironically the North had been dominant in winning the game the last decade, but this year it's two South teams playing.

Week 13: November 25-26, 2022

Rivalry week in the Pac! (with the non-conference rivalries USC/ND and Stanford/BYU)  Oregon vs Oregon State was color-on-color—an exact repeat of last season. ASU went traditional with 1990s-era gold pants and a gold helmet with Sparky on it. WSU went all-crimson vs all-white UW. Colorado vs Utah was a black vs white. The only unique set was Cal's Joe Roth throwback.

Week 12: November 19, 2022

The 125th "Big Game" and 40th anniversary of the "The Play" Cal vs. Stanford produced a real nice Cal faux-back that included a yellow helmet, simplified shoulder stripes and "Ax" logo instead of Cal logo. This is my favorite look for Cal so far this season and I'd suggest they go with this look for all their home games, instead the of the too-heavy use of navy blue. Stanford, without fanfare, pulled out their 1970s retro helmets and pants from last season. My only quibble is that if Stanford was trying to replicate the 1982 game they almost got there but needed a larger S logo...and Cal wore blue helmts in 1982.

Utah pulled out its all white throwbacks against Oregon, who wore a rare green and white combo.

ASU went about as mono-yellow as they have in a longtime with an extra sunny combo.