The joke's on Pac-12 in football

You want some true, idiotic nonsense?

Fine.

We’ve got it right here — and it might even be dumber than you imagine.

Apparently there is pressure on Larry Scott, the Pac-12 commissioner, to put some heat on those bosses who run the College Football Playoff.

Scott is supposed to muscle these guys in a move to get the CFP expanded to eight teams.

You see the point here, right?

Just keep making the playoff bigger and bigger until someone from the “Pacifist 12” actually makes it into the field.

Wait, it gets worse.

Jon Wilner, who covers the conference for the Bay Area Newspaper Group, is all flustered because Oregon was dumb enough to schedule Auburn to open the season.

Wilner reasons that if the Ducks had just slaughtered Idaho or Wyoming instead of trying on a gang of sluggers, they’d have finished 12-1 and slid into that fourth spot in the CFP.

I’VE GOT a better idea, Jon.

How about if Oregon had just BEATEN Auburn after leading for about a day and a half?

But no…

Pac-12 teams have little depth these days, Oregon got gassed down the stretch and, you know, that’s what happens when a lot of the best players in the West are heading off to other parts of the country.

So Oregon couldn’t hang on and took the loss, Auburn got a routine win at a neutral site, and the Pac-12 was pretty much out of the CFP before things even get rolling.

Now, I’ll bet you a month’s salary that Wilner wasn’t rooting for his beloved Ducks in the Pac-12 title game.

No, sir.

That was all about Utah dominating things, and then arguing that the Utes actually were better than Oklahoma — so let’s sneak them into the CFP.

Hilarious!

Utah stunk up the place, and would have lost to teams with a lot less talent than Oregon.

Voters from the East Coast probably watched that game and thought, “How in the hell did Utah manage to win a division in ANY conference?”

Everyone in Larry Scott’s office had spent plenty of time lobbying hard for Utah, and then watched the Utes humiliate themselves.

Doh!

BY THE way, if Utah or Oregon actually had bumbled into the CFP, you think we’d enjoy seeing a serious dose of Joe Burrow and LSU laying some wood?

Lord have mercy!

Thank goodness no Pac-12 team did accidentally make it into the playoff.

The truth is that this is a second-rate conference — like the ACC without Clemson.

Nobody in the Pac-12 would be a serious challenger in the Big Ten or the Big 12.

And it’s frightening even to think what would happen if schools from out here routinely played SEC opponents.

To recap…

Wilner argues that Oregon would have been in the CFP if it hadn’t scheduled Auburn.

So the Pac-12’s better teams should kid themselves and keep opening the schedule with Southern Utah and Northern Arizona, hoping to run the table in conference play.

But, well, they’re not even good enough to do that.

Here’s my plan: Recruit better and keep some of these kids home in the West.

Maybe we can throw together a squad that can make it into the CFP before the field expands to 64 teams.

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Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Steve also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball each Tuesday.