Chantel Jennings, ESPN Staff Writer 9y

Pac-12 morning links

What is with everyone today? It's Thanksgiving not truth day!

Leading off

Tonight the committee will release its College Football Playoff rankings and it'll be interesting to see how it views certain team's wins (cough, UCLA) and certain team's losses (cough, Ole Miss). The Ducks, after a big win over Colorado, should be secure in the top four though it'd be quite the surprise for them to sneak in to the top spot, even with Alabama's slow start against Western Carolina this weekend.

If you saw The Eliminator on Monday morning, there were probably a few things you noticed. First and foremost, Mark Schlabach pointed out the fact that yes, we're heading into the final weekend of the regular season. And no, the College Football Playoff hasn't broken the regular season by any means. Instead, with one week to go (in most conferences), there is plenty of excitement down the stretch.

No. 2 Oregon must survive the Civil War against Oregon State.

No. 3 Florida State must get past one more regular-season game against rival Florida.

The Big Ten West, Pac-12 South and SEC East are still up for grabs, too.

So much for the playoff ruining the drama of college football's regular season.

Oregon is still listed under "In Contention" while Arizona, Arizona State and UCLA are all in the "On The Fence" category. The good news for Pac-12 fans is that no conference team did anything detrimental this weekend. The only two teams that were eliminated were Ole Miss (which lost 30-0 to unranked -- but hot -- Arkansas) and Michigan State.

Awards season

The Butkus Award (given annually to the nation's top linebacker) announced its five finalists on Monday. The Pac-12 snagged two of the spots.

  1. UCLA's Eric Kendricks

  2. Washington's Hau'oli Kikaha

  3. Miami's Denzel Perryman

  4. Michigan's Jake Ryan

  5. Notre Dame's Jaylon Smith

That is one heck of a list of candidates and the Pac-12 Blog would like to congratulate all five. Seriously, these are all fantastic linebackers and players that certainly deserve to be honored after the seasons they've all had.

However, there's one pretty obvious name missing from that list: Arizona linebacker Scooby Wright III. He has been an absolute monster this season and though I wouldn't want to single out any individual on that list and say that Wright deserves the spot more, it certainly was shocking to see Wright --- who averages a nation-high 2 TFL per game and ranks fifth nationally in sacks per game -- to not be on that list.

And we weren't the only to feel that way:

Diving into some numbers

According to Nate Silver's model over at fivethirtyeight.com, the Bruins' 38-20 win last Saturday was the biggest win of the weekend. Based off his model, UCLA went from having an 8.2 percent chance to making the playoff to having a 14.0 percent chance of making the playoff.

There are eight schools (again, this is according to Silver's model) that have at least a 10 percent chance of making the playoff. Here's a list of the eight programs Silver says are still in the running -- by at least 10 percent -- to make the playoff, followed by their total chance and the percent their chance increased or decreased following last Saturday's games.

  1. Alabama -- 80.8 percent, +5.5 percent after beating Western Carolina, 48-14.

  2. Oregon -- 75.7 percent, +3.6 percent after beating Colorado, 44-10.

  3. FSU -- 59 percent, -0.9 percent after beating Boston College, 20-17.

  4. TCU -- 47.1 percent, -1.8 after being on a bye.

  5. Ohio State -- 42 percent, -1.5 percent after beating Indiana, 42-27.

  6. Baylor -- 33.3 percent, +2.5 percent after beating Oklahoma State, 49-28.

  7. Mississippi State -- 32.6 percent, +5.1 after beating Vanderbilt, 51-0.

  8. UCLA -- 14 percent, +5.8 percent after beating USC, 38-20.

So, UCLA's chances don't look awesome, but if it wins the Pac-12 title, there will certainly be an argument for the Bruins being in one of the four spots. And, as far as the chances of making the finals, the Pac-12 is still sitting pretty well. Oregon has a 44.2 percent chance to make the finals (UCLA is at 6.1 percent).

News/notes/team reports

  • There's still no indication as to whether or not Anu Solomon will be healthy for Saturday.

  • Jaelen Strong is expected to return for the Territorial Cup.

  • BYU is hoping to make a statement at Cal.

  • A nice read on Mike and Jay MacIntyre and their first year together as coach-player.

  • A little more from Charlie Pape, aka the "Jesus, girls and Marcus Mariota" kid.

  • Video of Mike Riley on running backs, quarterbacks, Civil War prep.

  • Grading the week for Stanford football.

  • Brett Hundley says that the game against USC was "probably" his last one in the rivalry.

  • Buck Allen could still lead the Pac-12 in rushing.

  • Utah's strong suits were weak against Arizona.

  • Video of Chris Petersen on the Apple Cup, Mike Leach and more.

  • Mike Leach's Monday news conference transcript.

Just for fun

For any media covering the Territorial Cup this weekend, Josh Kelman has you covered for your postgame story.

^ Back to Top ^