I would disagree with that. Sure, if you win out you’ll be the national champs but assuming that isn’t going to happen, this next game really isn’t that important in the broader view of the season. Losses agains the north only come into play if you have the same division record and don’t have a head to head loss with the team you are tied with. So basically we can win all the south games and lose all the north games and make the championship game over a south team with one south loss and only one loss overall.
Maybe I’m not understanding the pac12 standings metrics correctly but I think that’s how it goes.
Well, not exactly. We can’t lose more than 1 north game in your scenario because going 8-1 with a south loss still beats a team that’s 7-2 with 2 north losses.
The south games mean more because they are essentially tie breakers but going 5-0 in the south and 0-4 in the north won’t win the division.
Supposing we lose 2 games to Stanford and Washington, and best USC then Utah and USC both win out, then Utah wins the division.
The North games count just as much, it’s the reason the loss to Oregon last year hurt so much, because it guaranteed that even if we beat Colorado we would not win the South (a win over Colorado would have meant that we went 5-0 in the South).
I agree with you. Do all the analysis you want but if you don’t win the next one you are not going to be playing for the National Championship. Another important factor is what the loss does to the players that influence the rest of the games from a mindset standpoint
If the goal is to win the division and the conference, I don’t know how you can make that distinction. If the UTES win the SC game, but lose a couple others, does beating USC matter? Would that be considered a successful season? What are the criteria?