Month: August 2016

One of the best parts of my time at a wonderful little newspaper called The Daily was writing these rankings every week. One of the worst parts was that I had to keep them to 550 words. A guy can only be so pithy! So I’m planning on bringing it back this year in (hopefully only slightly) elongated form. Rankings are based on who I think would win on a neutral field in a game played tomorrow. Check back next week to see how the first weekend’s worth of results impact the order.

1. Stanford

It’s still strange to see a Stanford roster studded with five-star recruits, but such is the monster that Jim Harbaugh constructed and David Shaw has continued. Quarterback Kevin Hogan graduates? Here’s All-American recruit Keller Chryst to take his place. Blake Martinez and Aziz Shittu move on from the defensive front seven? A new crop of studs are there to step in. And did we mention Christian McCaffrey? With road games against UCLA, Washington and Oregon, the schedule does the Cardinal absolutely zero favors. On paper, though, this is the conference’s most talented team. Continue reading “Pac-12 Power Rankings: Preseason Edition”

I think only three players in the conference can win the Heisman Trophy this year: Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey, Oregon’s Royce Freeman, or UCLA’s Josh Rosen. Other players could and will have fantastic seasons, but for a host of reasons, they won’t really contend for the most prestigious trophy in sports. They might not have the national name recognition to mount a real campaign. They might play a position other than quarterback, running back, or wide receiver. They might play for a team that isn’t any good. Every college football player in the country is theoretically eligible for the Heisman, but in reality the pool of players with any chance to win is relatively tiny.

But it’s no fun to just do a list of three names. So consider this a ranking of the players from the Pac-12 most likely to be Heisman finalists and qualify for a trip to New York—a much larger population than the number of athletes who could actually bring home the trophy.

1. RB Christian McCaffrey, Stanford, Junior

Most oddsmakers consider McCaffrey one of the three favorites to win the trophy (for very good reason), along with Clemson QB DeShaun Watson and LSU RB Leonard Fournette, and he figures to have every opportunity to put up jaw-dropping stats on a team that could win ten games or more. The only obvious reason to be bearish is that some voters will surely hold McCaffrey’s season up to his 2015 campaign, and matching those totals will be a difficult task with defenses even more firmly focused on slowing him down. Continue reading “New York, New York: The Pac-12’s Heisman Hopefuls”

Note: This is the first of a five-part Pac-12 preview I’ll be pushing out this week. Check back tomorrow (Tuesday) for a look at the conference’s Heisman hopefuls.

The Pac-12’s teams will play a total of 36 nonconference games during the regular season, the vast majority of them during the first four weeks of the year. Some of them will be tight, some blowouts; some will have potential national-title implications, and some will be Oregon State vs. Idaho State. This is a ranking of the eleven that will be the most enjoyable to watch.

11. Sept. 1: Oregon State at Minnesota, 6 p.m.

The action on the field is secondary here: This is the contest mascot aficionados and tooth obsessives have been waiting for their entire lives. Benny the Beaver vs. Goldy Gopher. Rivers vs. dry land. Dams vs. tunnels. Only one rodent can survive.

Continue reading “The Top 11 Nonconference Games of the Pac-12 Season”