Parity can only be a positive

If Arizona can pull an upset of No. 2 Oregon tonight, the Pacific 10 Conference would reap the benefits.

I know the conference would miss out on extra Bowl Championship Series bid money, as an upset virtually assures the Pac-10 will have only one team in the BCS (and not USC).

Every team that plays in a BCS bowl game has to split a chunk of the money with schools from the rest of the conference, so, yeah, having a second team in the BCS would definitely help top to bottom. But a different school would get some publicity and a nationally televised bowl game to showcase its program, whether it’s Oregon or ASU.

Finally, all the nation’s best recruits aren’t being continually bombarded by the media touting USC’s “”greatness”” and “”dynasty,”” telling children USC is the only school they can go to if they want to win. It’s time to share the love with somebody else.

If Arizona can win, it would mark the third time this season an unranked Pac-10 team knocked off a top-two ranked team. Since when is parity a bad thing?

After Stanford beat then-No. 1 USC on Oct. 6 and Oregon State beat then-No. 2 Cal on Oct. 13, their recruiting efforts have gained a significant edge over other teams that don’t have a similar marquee win.

And, it wasn’t that long ago (Sept. 15) that a Washington team now having a terrible year in the eyes of most football analysts put up a helluva fight against then-No. 10 Ohio State until the Buckeyes’ better athletes ran away with the game late in the fourth quarter.

Don’t tell me that a performance like that will deter athletes from wanting to come to a school that can compete with top teams even while they’re having a down year.

Washington already has commitments from 10 players who got a ranking of 72 of higher on ESPN.com’s football recruiting tracker. Stanford, a conference doormat of late, even has eight highly ranked committed players. Oregon State has three highly ranked commitments and two top-ranked junior-college transfers.

If Arizona is able to showcase its abilities on ESPN and win tonight, I’m sure it would factor into a few players’ decision-making for where they want to play football next year – such as four-star recruits Robert Golden and (maybe) Gerell Robinson.

A third lower-tier team rising up to beat one of the country’s best shows the level of competition on the West Coast and should only help in luring more talent this way.

Brian Kimball,
sports writer

Arizona win would reflect badly on Pac-10

Nobody ever said parity is a bad thing.

The rollercoaster ride called college football that everyone has been watching all season is a result of parity, but too much of it isn’t a good thing. An abundance of parity turns any conference into a comedy.

Though an Arizona victory over Oregon tonight would undoubtedly be a huge win for the program – perhaps one of the biggest in the Wildcats’ history – the way it would reflect on the Pacific 10 Conference as a whole would be negative.

Obviously, the Pac-10 has had its share of upsets this season already – see Stanford over then-No.1 USC on Oct. 6 and Oregon State over then-No. 2 California on Oct. 13 – the conference still needs teams to come out alive.

If Arizona were to beat Oregon tonight, then that leaves only one team in the conference with less than two losses in ASU (which will likely fall again this season), and that makes the Pac-10 look terrible.

Since the first Bowl Championship Series title game in 1998, only one team has represented the Pac-10 in that contest: USC, in 2004 (win) and 2005 (loss).

As of now, it seems that Oregon is a shoo-in for the title game if it can win the remainder of its games, but if Arizona knocks off the Ducks, that will continue the streak of non-USC Pac-10 teams in that contest.

Every year, the Pac-10 is mentioned as one of the best conferences in the country, and though that is quite possible, not having a diverse representation of teams in the title game suggests otherwise.

To the teams out in the Southeastern Conference, the Pac-10 is a joke. Besides USC being ranked in the top 10 nationally every year, the only thing the Pac-10 has to hang its hat on is an array of other teams such as Oregon, Cal and UCLA somewhere in the top 25.

Arizona seems to win a game it probably shouldn’t just about every year. A Wildcat win tonight, however, would mean the Pac-10 will have to embrace another year without a powerhouse team.

If the Pac-10 really wants some national recognition, the best thing that could happen is for Oregon to advance to the BCS title game and perhaps win the national championship.

Ari Wasserman,
sports writer