Let’s not sugar coat things: the PAC 12 has not had a good out-of-conference season.
The downward spiral kicked off when Washington failed to seal the deal in what would have been a trajectory-changing win over Auburn in Week 1. It was momentarily staved off when ASU upset Michigan State and Colorado won in Lincoln in Week 2. But perceptions of the conference as the bottom feeders of the Power 5 only accelerated as the South division began imploding last weekend.
The latest dagger to the conference image was USC’s embarrassing effort at Texas on Saturday. We’ll talk more about that below.