Pac-12 Bowl Eligibility

After reading Ted Miller's Pac-12 Bowl Projections, I couldn't help but notice that he left two bowl spots open and put two teams in the BCS. This got me wondering, does that have to happen? 

In short, no it doesn't. It just takes a few (sometimes dubious, I'll admit) leaps of logic to get there. The first step is taking the teams already officially eliminated from bowl eligibility, Colorado and USC, and having them lose every one of their remaining games. This flipped a couple of teams that have already earned 5 wins into teams that are bowl eligible, such as ASU and Washington, and left UCLA, the only school with both left on the schedule one win short. I also gave the Pac-12 the benefit of the doubt in their two remaining non-conference games, adding wins to Stanford and Arizona. These adjustments put Arizona only two games away from bowl eligibility. 

My next step was to get Oregon and Stanford into the BCS. This meant having them win out, except against each other. That game I gave to Stanford, as Stanford in the title game would probably make the Rose Bowl select Oregon, and this is the only way (unless large amounts of chaos occur) that the Pac-12 gets two BCS bids. This makes OSU ineligible, for bowl play as it gives them 7 losses. This allows me to assign victories to the rest of OSU's opponents (Cal, Utah, and Washington) without remorse. 

From here it was just a matter of assigning wins and losses until teams reached 6 wins. There is still some wiggle room however, as two bowl eligible teams playing each other didn't always need to be projected.

Overall, there are a lot of teams with 6 wins, although a few have the potential to climb to 8 and (against the right opponents) not have it change the eligibility picture. This is clearly a flawed and silly analysis, as betting on Colorado, OSU, and USC to lose out would be an awful decision. This is just more evidence that the sanctions placed on USC hurt the Pac-12 as a whole. If I've made a mistake let me know, and I would be glad to correct it!

In terms of projections, here's what this analysis would (approximately) go with:

Tostitos BCS National Championship Game: Stanford vs. Alabama-LSU winner
Rose Bowl Game: Oregon vs. Big Ten
Valero Alamo: Washington vs. Big 12
Bridgepoint Education Holiday: Arizona State vs. Big 12
Hyundai Sun: California vs. ACC
MAACO Las Vegas: Washington State vs. Mountain West
Kraft Fight Hunger: Utah vs. ACC or Army
Gildan New Mexico: Arizona vs. Big 12

Free Agent: UCLA. I don't know how much fan support there would be for them. But hey, bowl games are bowl games, right Rick?

Here's a spreadsheet detailing what went into it. This chart can be read by looking down, and checking the colors. For example, to see what this is looking for in Utah's game against Arizona coming up, look at Arizona in the first column and read down until you get to the Utah line. The red means a loss is projected for Arizona, and the "@ ari" shows where the game is played. Similarly, looking all the way over at the Utah column, that cell is filled green signifying a victory. Underneath the schedule section is a listing of the teams' current record and conference record, if you would like to use this just as a quick chart to see who plays who still.