35 days to Cougar football: Rank the Pac-12

The Pac-12 released the media poll on Wednesday with the Cougars slotted into the No. 5 spot in the North. That was based on a total of 39 votes, which really isn't very many in the grand scheme of things. I think there is a chance we can top that with our CougCenter Pac-12 member poll.

It's relatively simple. Rank the North and the South 1 through 6 and pick a conference championship game winner. Here is my poll, only slightly influenced by a recent glass of Cougar Kool-Aid.

North

1. Oregon
2. Stanford
3. Washington
4. Washington State
5. Oregon State
6. California

I was emailing with Brian Anderson today and we are both higher on the WSU offensive line than most. If the offensive line comes together, I could see WSU winning seven, even eight games if things break right. That is a big if when you are talking about breaking in three new starters. WSU, however, isn't breaking in scrubs. There are 12 scholarship lineman -- nearly all recruited by the current staff -- competing for those spots. I'm fairly confident they can find three competent players. This isn't like a couple of years ago when WSU had a horrible offensive line and only six healthy and active scholarship players to try to fix it.

South

1. UCLA
2. USC
3. Arizona State
4. Utah
5. Arizona
6. Colorado

That is almost identical to how the media voted. The only change is I swapped Arizona and Utah. With Travis Wilson coming back for Utah, the Utes should be better. As Brian pointed out in his schedule post, Arizona lost Ka'Deem Carey and quarterback B.J. Denker. That transition will be harder than plug-and-place.

Pac-12 Championship

UCLA over Oregon

More than half of the media picked the Ducks to win the championship game, but I'll go the other direction. Jim Mora has a great coaching staff in play and all the talent the Bruins have brought in is starting to show.

That's my CougCenter Pac-12 member poll, post your poll below and I'll tally them up.