Saturday Night Five: CFP now out of reach and why it matters; officiating woes; Oregon State’s statement; UCLA’s forward leap
Instant reaction to Pac-12 developments on and off the field …
1. MIA for the CFP (again)
The Pac-12 emerged from the initial College Football Playoff rankings on Tuesday with an extraordinarily narrow path into the semifinals.
The conference required a dominant finish by either No. 15 Oregon or No. 18 USC and massive help in the form of losses elsewhere to simply join the playoff conversation in the final weeks of the season.
Then came the double-whammy, first with USC’s cancellation on Thursday and then with Oregon’s loss on Friday.
The Trojans can’t do better than 6-0 and won’t face a ranked opponent until at least the championship game — they aren’t getting in and probably won’t come close.
And after their come-from-ahead loss in Corvallis, the Ducks are toast.
Meanwhile, the other undefeated teams, Washington and Colorado, are unranked by the CFP selection committee and lack the rocket fuel on their upcoming schedules to climb into the top 10.
All hope is gone.
The Pac-12 will miss the playoff for the fourth consecutive season and, equally damaging from a PR standpoint, it won’t even be in the stretch-run conversation for the second time in three years.
As far as the playoff trappings are concerned … the ESPN and Fox studio show banter … the social media debates … the recruiting benefits … the Pac-12 is no different than Conference USA.
It’s a non-entity.
That’s not entirely a surprise. The CFP became a long shot the moment the university presidents pushed the restart back to Nov. 7.
But to be eliminated from the conversation before Dec. 1 — with three weeks remaining — is unquestionably a blow.
2. Pac-12 refs gonna Pac-12 ref
That was some finish in Corvallis, where Oregon State not only rallied from a 12-point deficit in the fourth quarter to stun the Ducks but also did the conference office a gigantic favor.
Had OSU lost, the officiating during their final drive would have been the story, the whole story and nothing but the story.
First of all, we’re dumbfounded the line judge didn’t give quarterback Tristan Gebbia a touchdown on the second-down run.
He was clearly cradling the ball to his chest as his body fell forward into the end zone in such a manner that his waist could be seen crossing the plane.
Unless the ball was somehow jammed between his knees when he fell forward, it was a touchdown.
And it wasn’t jammed between his knees.
BUT: The ball wasn’t visible in the replay shot down the goal line. Because of that, the bad call on the field could not get overturned.
Things got much worse on the next play, when the same line judge, Maia Chaka, somehow missed Oregon defensive tackle Austin Faoliu jumping offside so egregiously it was visible from space.
Add confusion with the timeout situation and Jonathan Smith conversing with the officials 20 yards onto the field, and the sequence was stocked with bad officiating optics for a conference that has more than its share of bad officiating optics.
Oh, and let’s add one more:
If Gebbia’s touchdown had been ruled correctly, he wouldn’t have been on the field for the next play — and wouldn’t have gotten hurt.
3. Beware the Beavers
In addition to slaying their enemy, denying the Pac-12 a playoff contender and letting the officials of the hook, the Beavers accomplished one more item on their to-do list:
The sent a message, far and wide, that things are changing in Corvallis.
From our perspective, Smith’s program is two years ahead of schedule in his third year.
OSU was 1-11 before he arrived, 2-10 in his first year, 5-7 in his second year and is now 2-2 … and victorious in the game that matters more than any other.
No coach in the conference has done a better job mixing and matching disparate pieces to make his system work.
(Then again, it’s OSU: Mixing and matching is the only way to build a competitive roster. Mike Riley did it magnificently for many years. Smith, who played for Riley, has the touch.)
Tailback Jermar Jefferson is the overwhelming favorite for Offensive Player of the Year.
Gebbia was uneven through three-and-a-half games but stellar in the second half against the Ducks.
And the offensive line is the biggest upside surprise of any position group on any team in the conference.
The Beavers finished the game on a 22-7 run, and it was no fluke whatsoever.
They were the better team.
It sure left the Hotline wondering what might have been for OSU with a different spot of the ball — an accurate spot — on Jefferson’s fourth-down run in the Week Two loss in Seattle.
4. Rising on the horizon, is that …?
Yes, it’s UCLA.
UCLA football.
Remember the Bruins?
Maybe this will help aid your recall: 1,099 days ago, the Bruins hired Chip Kelly to revitalize a program that, incomprehensibly, hasn’t won the conference title in 22 years.
During most of his three-years-and-three-days in charge, Kelly did very little to inspire hope in the UCLA fan base that the program would rise above the standard of its recent past.
But after an inspired performance at Oregon and a (mostly) stress-free win over Arizona tonight — both accomplished without the services of quarantined quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson — the Bruins are 2-2 and looking very much like a factor in the South.
What strikes us most, above and beyond the first-rate playmaking skills of tailback Demetric Felton, is the play of UCLA’s defensive line.
It’s big, fast and aggressive.
The entire front seven is.
In fact, the Bruins have displayed a level of physicality on both sides of scrimmage that we haven’t seen since forever.
It would come as less-than-zero surprise if they handled Arizona State next weekend — the Sun Devils have been out of action for three weeks — and then took care of USC.
If they ever reach the point of consistently limiting turnovers, they might even be dangerous.
5. Making sense of the division scenes
A few words on the races …
In the North, Washington (3-0) is alone in first place but hardly in command.
Oregon (3-1) is one game back in the loss column and hosts UW in two weeks.
If the Ducks win out, they take the crown.
If the Huskies win out, they’re champs.
In fact, UW could lose to Stanford next week and still win the division. So long as the Huskies handle business in Eugene, they would have the tiebreaker advantage over Oregon.
In the South, the Trojans are in charge.
Not only are they in charge, but they’re in better position because of the cancellation of the Colorado game.
If both teams win out, the Trojans would finish 5-0 and the Buffaloes 4-0 (conference games only).
According to Pac-12 tiebreaker rules, teams are considered tied if they have the same number of losses and no more than a one-game difference in wins.
The first tiebreaker, head-to-head result, would be moot.
The second component, division record, would favor USC (4-0) over Colorado (3-0).
The difference, essentially, would be that USC was able to play (and beat) Arizona State, while the Buffs had a no contest declared because of ASU’s COVID issues.
Fair? Nope.
2020? Yep.
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