PAC 12

[TriCitySam]

Watching championship. Can’t help thinking maybe Jimmy Lake shoulda visited with Pete about.

[trents]

About what? COVID precautions you mean?

Yeah, the so-called Pac 12 championship game was hard to take seriously.

And the Big 10 champions should not go to the playoffs IMO. Some of their teams didn't even play half of a season. Somehow, the ACC and the SEC managed to negotiate COVID and to play pretty much a whole season and their champions deserve to make the playoffs IMO.

[obiken]

You can nitpick it all you want but we won the P-12 Title get over it! Only Oregon and OState did not lose games to Covid. We did however lose our entire OL and the back end of our Defense to opt outs. Wa players wanted to go party? Too bad, I dont feel sorry for them. We would have been them at Autzen anyway, tonight's game proved that.

[RiverDog]

Wa players wanted to go party? Too bad, I dont feel sorry for them. We would have been them at Autzen anyway, tonight's game proved that.

You don't know how the WA players/staff contracted COVID anymore than you know that Orego would have beaten them on some random practice field in Eugene. All we know is that there was a breakdown or breakdowns somewhere in a chain involving hundreds if not thousands of possibilities. Oregon had players test positive earlier in the season, too, so it's not as if they had done things perfectly, just that the timing didn't happen to be as bad for them as it did for the Huskies.

It's why I have a hard time watching college football this year, because their season, particularly the Pac 12 of which I favor over other conferences, is such a joke. They're little more than a glorified scrimmage, or at least that's the sense I get watching a 3-2 team play a 5-0 team for a "championship". I see where they're not even bothering to paint the end zones for the Big 10 championship game.

What happened to the Pac 12, ie a team advancing to a championship game on a 3-2 record after having played less than half the games on their original schedule, is what I feared was going to happen to the NFL: That we would wind up with an illegitimate champion that lacks the credibility of having played a some semblance of a comparable season.

[TriCitySam]

You can nitpick it all you want but we won the P-12 Title get over it! Only Oregon and OState did not lose games to Covid. We did however lose our entire OL and the back end of our Defense to opt outs. Wa players wanted to go party? Too bad, I dont feel sorry for them. We would have been them at Autzen anyway, tonight's game proved that.

No doubt Oregon won it. Not sure what the UW players were doing, but question what Lake was doing (about COVID, somehow fell off my post). Hawks have zero cases and Lake can’t field a team? I understand NFL is different than college, but really? Pete says this is the hardest he’s coached (due to COVID). Seems to be true.

[RiverDog]

No doubt Oregon won it. Not sure what the UW players were doing, but question what Lake was doing (about COVID, somehow fell off my post). Hawks have zero cases and Lake can’t field a team? I understand NFL is different than college, but really? Pete says this is the hardest he’s coached (due to COVID). Seems to be true.

The Seahawks have gone to some extraordinary lengths in order to stay relatively COVID free, much of which isn't possible at a state school like UW:

The Seahawks are beating that challenge (COVID) with money. They are spending upwards of $40 million for daily COVID-19 testing. It’s done by tireless, energetic and fun-loving technicians from the NFL-contracted BioReference Laboratories, who report to work before dawn each day to trailers parked just outside the Seahawks’ team facility.

Players, coaches and staff report there by 9 a.m. seven days per week (and at the team hotel on game days) to get cotton swabs swirled around the inside fronts of each nasal cavity. Those swabs are sealed in vials and transported to the airport. Each afternoon a pilot flies a chartered plane with those Seahawks’ tests onboard to Burbank, California, to have the results processed and reported back to the team within 12-18 hours. That’s so each person tested can be cleared to go back into the Seahawks’ facility the next day.

Each morning, including weekends and holidays, the testing process repeats itself. So does the process of flying the tests to Burbank each afternoon and returning a plane to Seattle in time for the next day’s run. A couple technicians even fly on the team plane with the Seahawks to road games, to continue the testing each morning at their road hotels.

The Seahawks also are paying for any visitors to players to first report to team headquarters for COVID-19 testing, so they can be cleared before entering the players’ at-home bubbles Carroll and his staff have worked since July to create and maintain.

https://www.thenewstribune.com/article247416285.html

And testing isn't the only expense that the Hawks are incurring in an effort to keep ahead of the curve:

He’s (Pete) had the team’s food-services staff prepared whole, multiple meals for each player so they don’t have to go out to eat—and if they do, make it take out. That is, if you don’t already have a personal chef, as many do.

Can you imagine the "What's wrong with this picture?" comparisons if the State of Washington were to spend over half a million dollars per player so he can play in 6-8 football games while hundreds if not thousands of small businesses are shuttered, their employees on unemployment, and kids that can't attend school due to the Governor's forced shutdowns?

[Seahawkfan80]

You make great and valid points Riverdog. Hope things are well with you. I am doing fine.

[RiverDog]

You make great and valid points Riverdog. Hope things are well with you. I am doing fine.

Hey, guy! Good to hear from you and I'm glad that you're doing well! Merry Christmas!

[trents]

You can nitpick it all you want but we won the P-12 Title get over it! Only Oregon and OState did not lose games to Covid. We did however lose our entire OL and the back end of our Defense to opt outs. Wa players wanted to go party? Too bad, I dont feel sorry for them. We would have been them at Autzen anyway, tonight's game proved that.

You misunderstood me, obki. I'm not complaining that Oregon was in the championship game instead of WA. I really don't care who got to go. My issue was with even calling it a championship game when only half a season was played. Really, my frustration was with the conference starting play so late when other conferences went ahead with the season with only a short delay in start and managed to get in pretty much full season. When you start early you have more slack for rescheduling games on the fly and fitting them into bye weeks as necessary.

[obiken]

You misunderstood me, obki. I'm not complaining that Oregon was in the championship game instead of WA. I really don't care who got to go. My issue was with even calling it a championship game when only half a season was played. Really, my frustration was with the conference starting play so late when other conferences went ahead with the season with only a short delay in start and managed to get in pretty much full season. When you start early you have more slack for rescheduling games on the fly and fitting them into bye weeks as necessary.

Okay sorry!

[RiverDog]

I'm not complaining that Oregon was in the championship game instead of WA. I really don't care who got to go. My issue was with even calling it a championship game when only half a season was played. Really, my frustration was with the conference starting play so late when other conferences went ahead with the season with only a short delay in start and managed to get in pretty much full season. When you start early you have more slack for rescheduling games on the fly and fitting them into bye weeks as necessary.

This I agree with. Besides, it's not just about Oregon being advanced over Washington, they were advanced over Stanford, too, as they also wound up finishing their season with a better winning percentage than the Ducks. Oregon finished what was less than half of a normal season as the 3rd place team in a 6 team division yet they advance to the conference championship game due exclusively to complications presented by the pandemic, not because they were the better team. To call them the Pac 12 North Champ, let alone the conference champ, is absurd.

Most likely, the Pac 12 got together and said "Well, we have to have a conference championship game because that's what our TV contract calls for, so let's toss Oregon in there, call it a conference championship game, and hope no one notices the standings." Five games is not a football season and thus there is no legitimate champion. The only reason they didn't cancel the season or simply play games without a conference championship game was due to the power of the Almighty dollar.

Decades later, people will look at Oregon's Pac 12 championship, note the conference standings, then say to themselves "WTF?" before they read what's behind the asterisk.