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By Dave Consolazio, November 1, 2009 2:42 pm

There were plenty of teams rooting for Oregon to beat USC last night, but Boise State had more to root for than anyone. Not only did the loss bounce the Trojans from the national title picture, but it also strengthened Boise State’s resume, as their win over Oregon got even stronger.

Which brings us to a very interesting dilemma; how are we going to deal with the BCS ranking of these two teams? Both schools have very strong arguments, and thanks to the largely imperfect system that is the BCS, no one answer will satisfy everyone.

Let’s just say that Boise State and Oregon both run the table (not too much of a stretch with the way these two teams are playing). After all the smoke has cleared, who should be ahead of who?

Continue reading 'Arguing Both Sides – Oregon Ducks and Boise State Broncos: Who Deserves to be Higher in the Polls?'»

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By Dave Consolazio and Sam Saig, July 30, 2009 3:45 pm

In what wasn’t too much of a surprise to anyone, for the seventh straight year, USC was voted by the media to be the favorite to win the Pac-10 title this season.

Only four voters were brave enough to put a team other than USC in their top spot; three chose Cal and one chose Oregon.

USC’s schedule looks to be pretty brutal this season with both the Cal and the Oregon games coming on the road, and this is the most vulnerable the Trojans have looked in years. But can you really blame the 28 voters that stuck with USC? The talent pool is never ending, and six straight finishes at the top is hard to ignore.

The Media Poll has correctly selected the winner of the Pac-10 for nine years in a row, and is 26 of 48 in doing so all time. Here are the results of the poll; 10 points for 1st, nine points for 2nd, eight points for 3rd, etc.

1. USC (28 first place votes)… 316 points
2. California (3 first place votes)… 277 points
3. Oregon (1 first place vote)… 250 points
4. Oregon State… 216 points
5. Arizona State… 155 points
6. Stanford… 150 points
7. UCLA… 145 points
8. Arizona… 142 points
9. Washington… 74 points
10. Washington State… 35 points

Unfortunately, www.allpac10.com’s invitation to media day apparently got lost in the mail this year. Alas, there is always next year. Just for fun, here is how the two of us would have voted had we filled out a ballot today.

Those top four and bottom two teams seem pretty engrained in almost everyone’s heads; as for the middle of the pack, we’ll probably be mixing and matching for the whole month of August.