ESPN predicts season record for every PAC-12 team, conference champion
The college football season is finally here. Among other things, that means that this is the last opportunity to sneak in preseason predictions. ESPN wasn’t going to miss the opportunity, announcing predictions for every single PAC-12 team’s final record, as well as the conference champion.
Mark Schlabach, a writer for ESPN, is the one who came up with the predictions in an article. It’s an interesting conference, with Lincoln Riley joining to spark the USC Trojans. Meanwhile, Utah remains the most consistent program in a conference that just got rocked by the Big Ten in a conference realignment move to take USC and UCLA.
- Utah: 10-2, 7-2
- USC: 10-2, 7-2
- Oregon: 8-4, 6-3
- Washington State: 8-4, 6-3
- UCLA: 8-4, 5-4
- Washington: 7-5, 5-4
- Oregon State: 6-6, 4-5
- Arizona State: 6-6, 4-5
- Cal: 5-7, 3-6
- Stanford: 5-7, 3-6
- Arizona: 3-9, 2-7
- Colorado: 3-9, 2-7
PAC-12 Champion: Utah
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The PAC-12 no longer has divisions, which means it will just be the two best conference records who play for the conference championship game. According to these predictions, that would be Utah against USC. From there, ESPN thinks Utah will win the PAC-12 for the second year in a row.
Along with picking wins and losses, ESPN also picked USC quarterback Caleb Williams to be the conference offensive player of the year, while Jordan Addison will be the impact transfer for the conference. Utah’s Kyle Whittingham, meanwhile, is expected to be the coach of the year.
ESPN also made what they called three bold predictions for the PAC-12. The first bold prediction is that USC almost makes a New Year’s Six Bowl. After that, Schlabach predicts that UCLA will start the season 5-0, which based on the final record that he predicted for UCLA, also means they’ll lose four of their final seven games. After that, look for Oregon’s Dan Lanning to be the conference’s best new coach.