Pac-12 needs Huskies to be savior
LOS ANGELES – Chris Petersen is not given much to silliness. So it was no surprise when he stopped, midway into a sentence, when he spied something amiss. Across a hotel ballroom, Washington quarterback Jake Browning was wearing a bright blue squid hat, twirling a hula hoop and slowly gyrating for a slow-motion camera for some reason, drawing laughter from those watching and slight unease from his coach.
“Holy smokes,” Petersen said. “That does not make me feel real good about the stuff we’re talking about.”
What we’re talking about, of course, is what’s wrong with the Pac-12. And whether Petersen’s Huskies have the right stuff to fix it. And hey, there’s that season opener with Auburn.
“I don’t look at it like that,” he said, and of course he doesn’t.
Like most college football coaches,
Petersen is focused on the next game. Or the next practice. Or, in this case, on navigating his way through a media day when the persevering topic, at least in questions posed to Petersen, is some variation of how Washington is an overwhelming favorite to win the Pac-12 title — and beginning with a highly anticipated season opener against Auburn in Atlanta, the best hope to lift the league from its current state of melancholy. Yeah, we know. Silliness.
“It’s completely expected,” Petersen said. “I knew this would happen.”
But it’s mostly because of a 2017 season in which the Pac-12 cratered on the field, missing the College Football Playoff for the second time in its four seasons of existence and then going 1-8 in bowl games. The league’s performance is just a part of the reason for the downcast vibe. Add the men’s basketball’s issues, too, with only three teams in the NCAA tournament and two schools, Arizona and Southern California, embroiled in the FBI’s investigation into college hoops. And looming over every conversation about the Pac-12’s health is concern about finances.
The Pac-12’s annual revenue distribution (about $30 million a school) is well behind its Power Five conference peers. The Pac-12 Network, owned and operated by the league, still isn’t carried
“I think we’re all better than maybe the perception that’s out there nationally.”
Chris Petersen Washington football coach, on the Pac-12
by DirecTV, isn’t a significant revenue source and isn’t going to be. And although Commissioner Larry Scott said he “couldn’t be more delighted” with the league’s current television deals (which run through 2023-24), the financial gap with other conferences is only growing.
The league’s brightest returning star, by the way, did not take part in any media day silliness. Stanford running back Bryce Love, runner-up for the Heisman Trophy last season, skipped media day rather than a class. For Love, a human biology major who is on track to graduate in December, school means more; missing a few interview sessions for educational reasons is admirable.
But his absence inevitably contributed to a lingering question: What does football mean to the Pac-12?
“There are different ways to measure success in college sports,” Scott said. “The scorecard we think matters, and that I know our university presidents and athletic directors care about most, is academic and athletic success across all sports. By this measure, we’re achieving unmatched success.”
But the scorecard everyone else thinks matters is football. By that measure, the Pac-12 has fallen behind. It’s not unlike what the Big 12 went through a few offseasons back. And the answer is pretty simple.
“We’re in a results business,” Petersen said. “If you don’t produce, you’re gonna have a lot of bullets coming your way, and maybe right so. We’ve got to produce.” He meant the league.
And considering everything, asking one school to lift an entire league doesn’t really make sense. Washington alone cannot fix the Pac-12. But at least for now, the Huskies look like its best hope to get back to the Playoff, which would make everything seem better.
USC, the defending Pac-12 champ, is searching for a quarterback. Stanford’s performance has settled in recent years to a level below elite. Oregon is hoping its third coach in three seasons will lead the way back to prominence.
But Washington, 22-5 the past two seasons, returns the bulk of a very talented roster including a fourth-year quarterback starter in Browning. As Petersen begins his fifth season, the program seems on the cusp of returning to status as a legitimate national power.
“We’ve got to play some games,” Petersen said. “We’ll see.”
We’ll begin to see when the Huskies take on Auburn. The matchup of projected top 10 teams is enticing on its face and important because of the Playoff ’s emphasis on challenging schedules. But it’s also the first and probably most im- portant challenge for the entire Pac-12 as the league tries to rebound from 2017.
“I just kind of chuckle, because it’s like, ‘What more can we do?’ Whether the Pac-12 won every bowl game or didn’t, it doesn’t make this game any more important or less important,” Petersen said.
But it does. In part because of last season’s leaguewide struggles. But also because the last time we saw the Pac-12 in the Playoff, Washington was getting manhandled by Alabama in the stadium where it will start the season against the Tigers on Sept. 1. There’s no shame in that, but it fed the perception — see Oregon losing to Ohio State in 2014 — that the Pac-12’s best weren’t good enough.
And that’s the most important piece of all: perception.
Petersen said the Pac-12 has more parity than any other league, and he might be right. But here’s the dirty little secret: When it comes to measuring strength in college football, the assessment isn’t about what your entire league does but what your best teams do. The Pac-12 needs Washington — or USC, or you pick the team, but somebody — to be elite. That much, at least, should feed directly into Petersen’s mind-set.
“I know everybody is trying to protect the Pac-12,” Petersen said. “I think we’re all better than maybe the perception that’s out there nationally. But all I really worry about is us trying to do our deal, you know?”
If the Huskies can do their deal, the entire league gets a cut.