Pac-12’s best days are in the rearview mirror, but it doesn’t make sense

Stanford head coach Jerod Haase motions toward the court during game against California in the first round of the Pac-12 men’s tournament Wednesday, March 11, 2020, in Las Vegas. Given the Pac-12’s slide in recent years, he’s not the only one looking for answers. | AP

SALT LAKE CITY — The final AP Top 25 college basketball poll was released Wednesday morning. Did you notice anything largely missing from the rankings? Hint: There’s a certain conference that is vastly underrepresented.

The Pac-12.

The league has one school in the top 25 and none in the top 10. Oregon checks in at No. 13.

And it’s worse than that. If you scan the schools listed under “others receiving votes,” the Pac-12 doesn’t have another team in the top 30. Arizona is 33rd, USC is 37th, UCLA 39th, Utah 41st, trailing Stephen F. Austin, East Tennessee State and Providence, among others.

This year the Pac-12 was outshone by the Big Ten (6 schools in the top 25), ACC (4), Big East (4), Big 12 (3), SEC (2) and even the West Coast Conference (2), and it was equaled by the Atlantic 10 (1), Mountain West (1) and American Athletic Conference (1).

This year’s showing is actually an improvement. In the final poll for the 2018-19 season, the Pac-12 didn’t have a single school in the top 25. Half the league finished with a record that was just one game over .500 or worse.

And the year before that (2017-18), the Pac-12 was represented by one school in the top 25 — Arizona at No. 12.

The last time the league made a good showing was 2016-17 — three in top 10 (Arizona fourth, UCLA eighth, Oregon ninth).

In football, the Pac-12 has made a similarly mediocre showing. Last season only two of the league’s teams appeared in the final AP Top 25 rankings — Oregon No. 5, Utah 16. In 2018-19, the league was represented by Washington State and Washington and — 10th and 13th, respectively.

Since the 2014-15 season, four teams have been selected annually to play in the college football playoff. The Pac-12 has filled just two of those 20 berths, none in the last three seasons. It ranks a distant fifth among Power Five conferences in playoff berths, behind the SEC (7), ACC (6), Big Ten and Big 12 (4 each). In the two playoff games that included Pac-12 schools, Washington and Oregon lost by a combined score of 103-27.

So: What’s so great about the Pac-12? It has a prestigious name, but not much to show for it the last couple of decades.

Much has been written about the decline of the Pac-12. It is considered an elite conference — in football it is part of the so-called Power Five conferences (along with the Big Ten, Big 12, Atlantic Coast and Southeastern). The league calls itself “The conference of champions.”

That’s like an old man reliving his glory days. Those times are long gone.

In men’s basketball, a Pac-12 school hasn’t won a national championship since Arizona in 1997 and UCLA in 1995. After that, you have to go all the way back to UCLA in 1975.

The last time a Pac-12 school won the national football championship was USC in 2004, and that was later vacated by the NCAA for rules violations.

None of this makes sense. A half-dozen of the largest universities in the nation reside in the Pac-12. California — home to USC, UCLA, Stanford and Cal — is one of the three best recruiting grounds for athletic talent in the nation, along with Texas and Florida. That gives those schools a huge recruiting advantage.

A big part of the Pac-12’s fortunes can be tied to the marquee schools, UCLA and USC. In the last 80 years, the Pac-12 has won 16 national basketball championships, and 11 of them were won by John Wooden’s famed UCLA teams. To put it another way, only one Pac-12 school besides UCLA has ever won a national championship.

Likewise, in 100 years of football the Pac-12 has won outright or shared 31 national championships and more than half of them (16) were won by USC.

USC and UCLA have declined and they have taken the Pac-12 down with them. Who knows why those schools can’t be more successful considering their prestige, resources, recruiting advantages, size and location.

The league seemed to be doing Colorado and Utah a favor when they were invited to join the Pac-12 for the 2011-12 school year, but those schools have actually done the league a favor with their performances, especially Utah. The league needed new blood.

The Pac-12’s best years are well behind them.

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