Pac-12 Preseason Rankings/Predictions for 2022

Updated 8/26/2022 to fix typos and update ESPN FPI data.

Many of us are counting down the days until the first games. But before those get started, this is a look at what some of the predictions are for this season in the Pac-12. This will look at the preseason ratings predictions by some of the polls, magazines, and other sources.

Preseason Polls

There are 3 Pac-12 teams that are ranked in both the AP and Coaches polls.

USC going from a 4-8 team last year to a top-15 team is surprising, but not that surprising given the talent on the team (especially after the transfers) and who their coach is.

There are two other teams that received votes. UCLA received 2 points in the AP poll and 10 in the Coaches poll. Surprisingly, the other team getting votes was Oregon State which had 2 points in the Coaches poll.

Prior to the Pac-12 Media Day last month, the media covering the Pac-12 predicted the order of finish for the teams. As a reminder, divisions will not be used to determine who gets to play in the Pac-12 Championship game, so there is a single list of all 12 teams.

The number in () next to some of the teams is the number of first place votes that team got.

Other places have also come up with their top-25 rankings. One of those is Sports Illustrated. They have 4 Pac-12 teams in their top-25:

• Utah (#4)
• USC (#9)
• Oregon (#15)
• UCLA (#23)

CBS Sports ranked not just the top-25, but all 131 teams. Here is where the Pac-12 teams were slotted in their rankings:

Other Preseason Rankings

There are other preseason top-25 rankings as well, from magazines like Phil Steele and Lindy, and from on-line magazines like College Football News and Pick Six Previews. There is a web site, stassen.com, which summarizes a lot of the preseason magazine polls (there are 13 as of now). You can find their ‘consensus’ rankings as well as the rankings from each of the magazines here: https://stassen.com/preseason/consensus/2022.html

Their ‘consensus’ is a combination of the rankings from all of the sources. Here are where the Pac-12 teams end up in their ranking.

• Utah (#6)
• Oregon (#9)
• USC (#19)
• Oregon State (#44)
• UCLA (#49)

Again a bit of a surprise to see Oregon State there. One publication, College Football Poll, actually has Oregon State at #21 in their top-25 rankings, which is why they are in the rankings. The schools not listed are not in the top-25 from any of the rankings.

This site also has rankings for the teams in each conference, including the Pac-12 conference. Because the Pac-12 has changed to taking the top-2 teams regardless of division, the Pac-12 rankings are done two different ways: one is a ranking by division and one is a ranking of all teams (no divisions). Some publications ranked one way and the others the other way.

Here is the ranking without divisions:

If the division-less rankings seem inconsistent with the ones with divisions, that’s because it was different publications making the predictions. Some did it one way while others did it the other way. For example, with divisions, UW was either 2^nd or 3^rd in most publications (one had them 5^th); without divisions, UW was as high as a tie for 4^th or as low as 9^th. (The one that has UW at 9^th, College Football Poll, also has USC at 11^th, Stanford at 4^th, and Colorado at 6th in the Pac-12.

Some of you may be familiar with the Sagarin rankings. Jeff Sagarin has been putting out a ranking of college football teams for a while (I believe since at least 1998); and his rankings were used in the old BCS system. He currently has a preseason ranking of all D1 teams (https://sagarin.usatoday.com/2022-2/college-football-team-ratings-2022/). Here are where he has the Pac-12 teams:

• Utah (#10)
• Oregon (#14)
• USC (#18)
• UW (#21)
• UCLA (#33)
• Arizona State (#35)
• Oregon State (#39)
• Stanford (#44)
• California (#51)
• WSU (#54)
• Arizona (#69)
• Colorado (#78)

Obviously a bit surprising to see UW in a top-25 list. By the way, he has Kent State at #97, Portland State at #171, and Michigan State at #42. So, by his listing, UW is ahead of all but one of the teams that they will play this year.

ESPN FPI

ESPN also has their Football Power Index (FPI) where their rank all of the FBS teams, predict the W-L records for each team, and include their projections for each team’s chances at winning out, making the playoffs, and more. Here is some of that information for all of the Pac-12 teams.

(I’m not sure why the projected wins plus losses don’t add up to 12 in all cases; I think they are adding in the chance of playing in the Pac12 Championship game.)

The ‘6Wins%’ is an indication of how likely each team is going to win 6 games and thus make a bowl game. UW is one of the 5 teams that seem very likely to win at least 6 games.

ESPN Game Projections

In addition to projections of win-loss records for all of the teams, ESPN also has projections for each game. For example, they have UW with a 39.3% chance of beating Michigan State and a 56.7% chance of beating California. Here is a summary for all of the Pac-12 teams. (Favored means a greater than 50% chance of winning.)

It isn’t unusual to have a 1 or 2 win difference between projected wins and games favored. That just means that the team is expected to be in some close games that could go the other direction. In the case of Stanford, they are only favored in 3 games, but they have a better than 47% chance in 3 of the games where they are underdogs. On the other hand, UCLA is favored in 10 games, but their chances in a couple of those games are by less than 60% (Arizona State and USC).

When looking at the individual games, here are some game predictions that seem a little surprising:

· Arizona is favored (50.9%) against WSU (game is at Arizona).

· Colorado is only favored in one game: Cal (52.3%), although it is a home game for Colorado.

· Oregon is favored over Utah (52.4%). It is a home game for Oregon, but they are obviously not factoring in what happened the last 2 times they played.

· Oregon State is an underdog to both Boise State (49.8%) and Fresno State (48.4%). And while still an underdog, they have a 42% chance of beating USC.

· Stanford is favored over just Colgate (98.3%), Oregon State (56.5%), and WSU (67.2%).

· UCLA is favored over USC (54.3%).

· Utah is an underdog to Florida (47.9%), and to Oregon (as noted above).

ESPN FPI Projections for UW Games

Here are the game-by-game projections for UW’s games:

The projected loss to Arizona State isn’t too surprising given that it is a road game. The surprising one to me is WSU. I would have expected WSU to be favored or at least be closer since it is also a road game for UW, but then they aren’t expecting a lot from WSU this year (just 5 wins).

Week 1 Games

Here are the projected winning percentages for each of the Pac-12 teams in their first games.

* indicates a neutral site game played in Atlanta

Despite being considered a top-25 team, they don’t give Oregon much chance at all of beating Georgia. That is about the same winning percentage as Kent State against UW.

Note that these numbers can change weekly based on the games that have been played. It is possible that they will be slightly different by the start of the first game for a Pac-12 team (Arizona State on Sept. 1). However, that seems unlikely since none of those teams play in Week 0 games this weekend. I will hopefully be updating this information each week and checking to see how accurate these projections are.

Consensus?

The top-3 teams in the conference are consistently Utah, USC, and Oregon, although the order is not consistent. UCLA is a consensus #4 team in the conference. Arizona and Colorado seem to be the consensus in the bottom third of the conference. There isn’t a lot of consensus about the rest of the teams, although UW and Oregon State are generally toward the top of the rest. With so much change in the conference this year with 4 new head coaches and a lot of transfers, should we believe any of these projections even where there is consensus?

Despite last year’s performance by UW, the good news is that there are plenty of people expecting that UW will rebound this year. It may take at least 3-4 weeks before we have a good idea as to whether we can believe those expectations. Because UW is expected to easily win their first 2 games, I wouldn’t expect a big improvement after those games. Obviously a win over Michigan State would change the projections positively; and it’s possible that a close loss may also improve the projections as well. Even a win over Stanford is not likely to change things much (unless Stanford happens to beat USC).