Before all this happened, it was thought that ASU's high number of starters returning would propel it to the top of the PAC-12 South, but with all the injuries and the retirement from football by its starting quarterback, and a lack of team cohesion and leadership, things seem to be very different today than just a few months ago.
But even if they did not have all these problems, I find it amazing that anyone would automatically have high expectations of ASU, when two of their six wins last season were against Northern Arizona and Portland State...otherwise known as FCS patsies.
So it's not without surprise, even without any of these distractions factored in, that ASU is ranked 34th in Jeff Sagarin's pre-season ranking of NCAA schools (FCS and FBS combined). In fact, several PAC-12 teams are sitting above ASU:
- 2 Oregon
- 10 Southern California
- 12 Stanford
- 20 Utah
- 23 Oregon State
- 27 California
- 31 Arizona
- 34 Arizona State
- 52 Washington
- 53 UCLA
- 72 Colorado
- 94 Washington State
This would make ASU 4th in the PAC-12 South with just UCLA and Colorado below them. That's a fairly realistic projection, if you ask me. No one's expecting Utah to have a drop off in competitiveness just because it's moving from the Mountain West Conference to the PAC-12, and with Nick Foles coming back as starting QB at Arizona, it's not exactly a cake walk for ASU.
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