PAC-12 Media Day, normally scheduled in July, took place just a few weeks ago and up until early September it looked as though we weren’t going to see any participation in college football this year by the conference. I don’t think it was a coincidence that Commissioner Larry Scott picked Thursday, September 3rd, to annouce that they had entered into an agreement with Quidel Corporation to provide the resources to conduct daily COVID-19 testing of student-athletes participating in close-contact sports across all PAC-12 campuses. What else happened on the 3rd of September? The first two games of Week 1 were played. There were four scheduled, but two were postposed due to COVID. Welcome to the 2020 College Football Season.
Larry Scott had this to say regarding the agreement with Quidel; “This is a major step toward the safe resumption of Pac-12 sport competitions. The availability of a reliable test that can be administered daily, with almost immediate results, addresses one of the key concerns that was expressed by our medical advisory committee, as well as by student-athletes, coaches and others. At the same time, our partnership with Quidel, the industry leader in point-of-care antigen testing, will provide crucial research data that will benefit our members’ communities as well as the entire country.”
A month and four days later on October 7th the PAC-12 held a Virtual Media Day via Zoom. According to the preseason media poll released that day and voted on by the 38 members who cover the league last year’s PAC-12 Champion, Oregon, will repeat. Not a surprise as the Ducks led the conference recruiting rankings for the league at the time and placed just outside of the Top 10 nationally. Highly regarded, they currently still rank in the national Top 20 even though we’re coming up on Week 9 at the end of October and they still haven’t played a single game. With the media poll only correctly predicting the conference champion just 31 of 59 times-basically a toss up-if your not a Duck fan hang on to that statistic for a while.
According to 24/7 Sports, Oregon barely beat out Washington in the recruiting rankings with Arizona State and Stanford grouped next and USC coming in last at the time but surging late and according to the Los Angeles Times, making it all the way up into the Top 10. Regardless, the Media Poll has USC winning the South capturing 32 first place votes compared to runner-ups Arizona State and Utah. Oregon is followed in the North by Cal and Washington.
The PAC-12 has announced a seven game conference only schedule that begins on Saturday, November 7th, Week 10 of the traditional college football schedule. They have instituted a new PAC-12 Big Noon Saturday Game of the Week and start off with a good one between the two teams that will be competing head-to-head for the PAC-12 South Champsionship, USC and Arizona State. They call it Big Noon, but for us on the West Coast make sure you’ve got your TV tuned in at 9:00 am. The 2020 PAC-12 Football Championship Game will be broadcast nationally on FOX and take place on Friday, December 18th at a venue not yet announced.