Overall: 56 - 33
I hate rivalry week, because it's the one week you're guaranteed to get upsets all over the place.
Tonight is the PAC-12 championship and Saturday is the rescheduled Oregon State - Nicholls State game, due to Hurricane Isaac.
First, we all know Oregon State is going to blow out Nicholls State; zero doubt whatsoever. Might as well score beauty points the day before the final bowl invites are made.
Second, there is some intrigue behind the PAC-12 championship: If UCLA wins, could this mean that the Bruins purposely threw the game against Stanford last week? Put it this way: If UCLA had won, they'd play Oregon instead; that would have been a taller task, in my opinion, and one that apparently TJ Simers of the LA Times also shares. But critically, it also gave the Bruins an opportunity to test their game plan against Stanford, then fix it if needed; shut down what you've got if it's working, then bring it back with some tweaks in the following week.
If Stanford wins however, then UCLA just plain sucks and USC did a terrible disservice to the PAC-12 by losing to Mora's Bruins. I'd love the latter to be true (that the Bruins really do suck), but I think the former might be reality, that they strategically lost, so that they'd guarantee a win in the championship game and an invite to the Rose Bowl in January.
| Week 14 | |||
| Visitor | Home | ||
| UCLA | 24 | Stanford | 23 |
| Nicholls State | 9 | Oregon State | 63 |
By the way, if anyone had said in August that the PAC-12 championship would feature Stanford and UCLA, not Oregon and USC, they would have been laughed at. All this goes to show, nothing in life is guaranteed -- you have to play every down of every game. Congratulations to Stanford and UCLA.
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