This piece aims to answer one simple question: Which is the best athletic program in the Pac-12? It’s easy enough to look at the past few seasons of results and notice Oregon and Stanford are great at football, while Washington and Cal dominate in crew. But what about the entire span of Pac-12 sports, from men’s tennis to volleyball to track and field? Who’s number one?
To figure it out, I gathered the full league standings for nineteen different sports from the past four years. I then calculated each school’s average place in the standings for each year, plus each school’s overall average from the past four years combined. The primary result is a ranking of which school’s athletic programs are the best over the full breadth of Pac-12 sports. But the data includes plenty of other interesting nuggets, like which school has had the single most dominant school year since 2012-13.
Before we get into the full results, a word on the methodology, so feel free to scroll past these next two paragraphs if that doesn’t interest you.
There are eight sports in which all twelve conference schools compete: football, volleyball, women’s soccer, women’s cross country, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s golf, and women’s track. For these, I ranked the schools from one to twelve based on their finish in the regular season standings. If there was a tie, I averaged out the ranking; for example, since USC and Washington tied for this year’s volleyball title, each received a 1.5, while third-place finisher Stanford received a 3 and last-place finisher Cal received a 12. Low numbers are good. Simple enough.
Things were a little messier with the other eleven sports in which not all twelve schools compete (men’s soccer, men’s cross country, women’s gymnastics, women’s golf, baseball, softball, men’s and women’s tennis, men’s and women’s crew, and men’s track). For these, I again ranked each school in order of finish. But that’s not a totally accurate picture — in a sport like men’s crew, where just six schools compete, a fifth-place finish isn’t quite as impressive as it is in, say, baseball, where eleven schools compete. So to account for that, I multiplied each standing by a constant that varied from sport to sport in order to keep things proportional. Essentially, I made sure the mean and median for each individual dataset remained at 6.5, so that these sports with fewer than twelve schools could be accurately compared to the eight sports with full participation. For instance, in a nine-team sport like men’s cross-country, this year’s league champion, Colorado, received a 1.6 for the purposes of these rankings, runner-up Stanford received a 2.8, third-place Oregon a 4.1, etc. I’ll spare you any more of the mathematical details here.
Hopefully that makes some modicum of sense. Let’s get into the fun stuff.
Here are the best programs so far for the 2015-16 school year, which includes the standings from football, volleyball, men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s soccer, and men’s and women’s basketball (average place in standings in parentheses):
| 2015-16 ranking |
| 1. Stanford (3.18) |
| 2. Oregon (4.44) |
| 3. Washington (5.6) |
| 4. USC (5.75) |
| 5. Utah (6.25) |
| 6. UCLA (6.54) |
| 7. Colorado (6.8) |
| 8. Arizona St. (7.46) |
| 9. Washington St. (7.81) |
| 10. Arizona (7.91) |
| 11. Cal (7.95) |
| 12. Oregon St. (9.13) |
Stanford is the clear number one thus far, with league titles to its credit in men’s and women’s soccer and football. Oregon is well established in second place, with a Pac-12 championship in men’s basketball and second-place finishes in football and women’s cross country, before things start to get real tight in the middle of the standings. Despite a co-league title in women’s basketball, it has not been a pleasant six months to be a Beaver. No other Oregon State sport has finished in the top half of the Pac.
Here are the rankings from last season, the 2014-15 school year, which include full data from all nineteen sports:
| 2014-15 ranking |
| 1. Oregon (4.06) |
| 2. UCLA (4.45) |
| 3. Stanford (4.8) |
| 4. USC (5.67) |
| 5. Arizona St. (6.057) |
| 6. Washington (6.06) |
| 7. Arizona (6.96) |
| 8. Cal (7.36) |
| 9. Colorado (7.51) |
| 10. Oregon St. (8.13) |
| 11. Utah (8.74) |
| 12. Washington St. (9.74) |
The Webfoots led the way, with league titles in football, women’s track and cross country, men’s track, and softball helping bring that average down. Of note here is that Stanford actually tops Oregon, 3.13 to 4, if we just consider the eight sports in which the whole conference compete; it’s only when we bring in the other eleven sports that Oregon pulls ahead. The biggest drag on the Cardinal: last-place finishes in both baseball and softball. We can also now see that Washington and Washington St. are thus far both majorly improved in 2015-16 compared to last year, while Arizona and Arizona St. have each taken steps backward.
And now for perhaps the juiciest numbers, the four-year average, which accounts for the full careers of the seniors that will graduate this spring and represents a full cycle in college sports:
| Four-year ranking |
| 1. Oregon (4.35) |
| 2. Stanford (4.45) |
| 3. UCLA (4.86) |
| 4. USC (5.60) |
| 5. Washington (5.68) |
| 6. Arizona St. (6.10) |
| 7. Cal (6.88) |
| 8. Arizona (7.23) |
| 9. Colorado (7.73) |
| 10. Utah (8.32) |
| 11. Oregon St. (8.42) |
| 12. Washington St. (9.32) |
With the spring sports still to go, Oregon is currently on top, although the difference between the Ducks and Stanford is pretty negligible. The best use of this data is probably to divide the list into tiers. Oregon, Stanford, and UCLA have been the league’s best programs for the past four years. USC, Washington, and Arizona St. have all been above average. The spreads get bigger farther down, with Cal, Arizona, Colorado, and Washington St. all firmly established in their places, although Utah and Oregon St. are neck-and-neck over the number ten spot.
Some more interesting takeaways from this little experiment:
-The most dominant year of the past four was UCLA in 2012-13, when the Bruins averaged a finish of 3.74 out of twelve in their eighteen sports. Only three sports (men’s tennis, men’s basketball, men’s soccer) won league titles, but only one (softball) finished in the bottom half of the standings.
-The worst year: Washington St. in 2012-13, when the Cougars averaged a 10.1, weighed down by last-place finishes in baseball, women’s golf, football, men’s basketball, volleyball and women’s cross-country.
-Stanford has been in the top four each of the past four years. Oregon has been in the top four three times, UCLA and Washington each twice, and Arizona St. once.
-Arizona St. finished second in 2013-14 with an average of 5.4 after finishing seventh the year before, the largest jump in the standings any school has made the past four years.
-In some order, Colorado, Utah, Oregon St., and Washington St. have finished in ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth each of the past three years, with Washington St. coming dead last every time. That’s changed in a big way so far this year, though, with Utah rising all the way to fifth and Colorado and Washington St. each also gaining some separation from the bottom.
If there are any specific questions, I’d be more than happy to share more of the data. I also plan on updating this list in the spring to get a full four years worth of results in the book. As far as I can tell, this is the most accurate way to measure success in the Pac-12, and it leads to some pretty interesting (although perhaps predictable) results about which programs are the best.