It’s a season of change at quarterback position

Training camps begin this week across the Pac-12 Conference and, admittedly, the development would have prompted mild interest in past years.

We learned our lesson in 2021.

The Pac-12’s abysmal early-season showing, which included losses to Montana, Nevada, Northern Arizona, Utah State, BYU, San Diego State and Fresno State, underscored the significance of training camp as a tool for evaluation and positioning teams to win immediately.

Sure, there was a COVID-19 hangover last season resulting from limited practices and games during the prior 12 months. Stamina and physicality clearly were not up to standard when September ’21 arrived.

But COVID-19 wasn’t the sole reason the conference underperformed a year ago.

We saw numerous instances of head coaches picking the wrong quarterback: Oregon State, Stanford, Utah, Arizona and Washington State all started the season with their best option on the bench.

The situation this month is vulnerable to additional whiffs in judgment, with seven teams likely to have new starters.

Our preview of Pac-12 training camp begins there ...

where Michael Penix Jr., the Indiana transfer, is our frontrunner for the job.

Meanwhile, Oregon State’s Chance Nolan and Colorado’s Brendon Lewis are returning starters who seemingly must cement their status this month to earn the starting spot.

That’s another way of saying only Stanford (Tanner McKee), UCLA (Dorian Thompson-Robinson) and Utah (Cam Rising) have returning starters and no competition.

Should be an interesting month. stocked with newcomers and inexperienced returnees.