The Preseason Media poll was released on July 24th and in the 27 years that they have been predicting the champion for the upcoming season they have only been correct on five occasions or less than 20% of the time. So feel free to take this all in with a grain of salt. For the 2019 poll, Utah was voted as the favorite to win the South Division as well as the PAC-12 Championship Game.
In the South they have USC coming in 2nd followed by Arizona State and UCLA tied for third with Arizona and Colorado bringing up the rear. In the North Division they show Oregon and Washington in a virtual tie with the Ducks eventually taking it followed by Stanford, Washington State, Cal, and Oregon State-who is expected to once again be the doormat of the conference.
Regarding the vote above, no doubt one of the considerations has to be the fact that Utah Coach Kyle Whittingham is the longest tenured head coach in the PAC-12 and the third longest tenured coach at the same school in the NCAA FBS. Going into his 16th year at Utah he has a record of 120-61 with a success rate in bowl games that ranks second in NCAA history. Also playing into the mix is the fact that four seniors, that could have moved onto the NFL at the end of last season, made a commitment to come back and win a PAC-12 Conference Championship and maybe more. That includes Zack Moss who could become the all time leading rusher in Utah history with back-to-back 1,000+ yard seasons even though missing the final five games last year. With quite a few returning players, one element that doesn’t seem to be a concern to the media is the recruiting class, with Utah ranking 7th in the PAC-12 and 42 nationally as of July 28th.
As for the odds-makers, with no one currently projected to win 10 games there is no clear front-runner in the PAC-12 with Oregon, Utah, and Washington in somewhat of a dead-heat. As for my pick—we’ll get to that later.