LOS ANGELES -- The Pac-12 hasn’t had many meaningful late season contests that have been a major factor in the College Football Playoff chase the last two years. Part of that has to do with the conference simply not producing an elite team capable of inserting itself in the final four conversation and another part is the simple fact that the league has cannibalized itself well before the month of November rolls around.
Some of that blame can be put on the road the 12 teams themselves face with nine conference games and a league title game as well. While the Pac-12 is by no means alone in that kind of grind, there seems to be no momentum out West in following the example set by the ACC and SEC in playing just eight conference games in order help postseason aspirations.
“We regularly discuss that (eight-vs-nine conference games) question, and every time we’ve discussed that question, the important principles of having a tough schedule, playing as many teams as possible in the league, challenging yourself have been the overriding principles that have defined what our campuses want to do. So we’ve been committed to nine conference games,” commissioner Larry Scott said at Pac-12 Media Day. “Our schools do not approach it from the perspective of how do we game the system or simply have it be about the College Football Playoff. But that’s a decision our schools make. Our schools come together as a conference and decide what the conference schedule is going to be.”
While there’s no movement on the number of league games, the conference office is making tweaks to be less rigid when it comes to win those games are played. Since expanding from the old Pac-10, there typically have been no non-conference games played late in the year with the lone exception of historic rivalries between Stanford/USC and Notre Dame.
It sounds like that stance is now being softened across the Pac-12, giving schools more flexibility in putting together schedules. That could be potentially huge news for somebody like BYU, which has a number of dates against programs in the conference over the coming years and would benefit greatly from playing some of their geographic rivals later in the year instead of being front-loaded in September.