Why Arizona State's Loss Should Change Playoff Committee's Perception of Pac-12

Every conference has a stadium that should have its own episode of the Twilight Zone. For the Pac-12, Oregon State's Reser Stadium fits that description.

It's where the hopes and dreams of highly ranked teams go to die.

That's exactly what happened in Saturday night's stunning 35-27 win by Oregon State over Arizona State. As Brett Edgerton of ESPN tweeted, it was the fifth time since 2000 that an unranked Beavers team beat an Associated Press Top 10 team at home:

Oregon State coach Mike Riley is one of the noted "good guys" in the business, but he's crushed the soul of some great teams.

The Sun Devils may not be one of those great teams in the traditional sense, but at No. 6 in last week's College Football Playoff rankings, they did have their eyes on a playoff spot.

"When you're sixth in the country, you go into a place and you're going to get everybody's best performance,'' Arizona State coach Todd Graham told Doug Haller of the Arizona Republic. "We got Oregon State's best shot tonight. We weren't prepared for it. They deserve the credit."

That's all but officially been thrown out the window now. Between a loss to a .500 team that dwells at the bottom of the Pac-12 North and a blowout at the hands of UCLA, Arizona State no longer has a shiny resume.

Its best win, depending on your view, is either over USC on a Hail Mary or over Utah, which currently sits in fifth place in the South Division.

That brings to light another point: The Pac-12 South, with the exception of Colorado, is anyone's division to win.

UCLA, at 8-2 overall and 5-2 in the Pac-12, has come full circle and controls its conference destiny with remaining games against USC and Stanford. However, the Trojans technically lead the South by a half-game.

Overall, the first- and fifth-place teams in the South are separated by no more than two games.

There's a lot of depth in the Pac-12 South, but few, if any, truly great teams—not unlike the rest of the college football landscape.

Things are different in the North Division, where Oregon has secured a spot in the conference championship game and controls its path to the playoff. The second-place team in that division is 5-5 Stanford, which also happens to have a losing conference record after falling to Utah 20-17 in double overtime.

As strange as it sounds, two road games against Cal and UCLA could mean the Cardinal is in danger of losing out on bowl eligibility for the first time since 2008.

To see the conference champion of the past two years drop off this far is surprising.

All of this leads to the question of whether the Pac-12 really is the second-best conference—it feels like there are good divisions rather than good conferences in college football—behind the SEC like it was pegged in the offseason.

Last week's CFP rankings would indicate that the committee still thinks so. The Pac-12 had five ranked teams—Oregon, Arizona State, UCLA, Arizona and Utah—which was tied with the Big Ten for second-most by any conference.

The SEC led all conferences with seven.

Team	Record	Conference Record	CFP Ranking (Week 11)
USC	7-3	6-2	NR
UCLA	8-2	5-2	No. 11
Arizona State	8-2	5-2	No. 6
Arizona	8-2	5-2	No. 14
Utah	7-3	4-3	No. 23
Colorado	2-8	0-7	NR

What's more, though, is that all five of those Pac-12 teams were ranked at least one spot higher in the CFP poll than the Associated Press poll.

Those numbers are bound to shift this Tuesday when the committee releases its updated rankings. Whatever those rankings are, though, this much is becoming clear: The Pac-12's best, and probably only, playoff hope now is Oregon.

Everyone else in the conference may be on the outside of the Top 10 looking in depending on where the committee places the Bruins, who were off this week.

After Arizona State's loss, it's tough to find a definitive No. 2 in the Pac-12. That's not a good thing if one of those teams were to upset the Ducks in the Pac-12 Championship Game.

Ben Kercheval is a lead writer for college football.