With the scheduled start scheduled for nine a. m. Pacific Time, 20th Southern California will prepare for Saturday’s first game of the season as opposed to the state of Arizona with a COVID-1nine test and an early bedtime.
From Friday night until the next morning, the program itinerary looks more like a camp than the typical school football weekend:
Trojans will be in their rooms Friday night at 7:15 a. m. , followed by lights off at 9:30 a. m.
The alarm clock is at 6 a. m. , with an assembly starting 15 minutes later. Arrival at the Coliseum is scheduled for day 7.
The state of Arizona will start on Saturday even before, and breakfast service will begin at 4:45 p. m.
“No one’s going to be here at 4:45 with me,” Arizona State coach Herm Edwards said. “I get up very early. “
Considered before last season, but raised about how the first changes would have an effect on fan delight, not a challenge this season with only the families allowed to finish, the resolve to schedule matches in the HE window at noon will attract more eyes to the Pac. -12 during a frantic race at the end of the normal season.
“This will be a wonderful presentation for pac-12. A lot of visibility, many opportunities for our schools to show where they are,” Commissioner Larry Scott told USA TODAY Sports. “We realize that we come in terms of the national verbal exchange on football. It was strategically vital for our league to start our first week with big matches and wonderful visibility opportunities. “
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As the Bowl Subdivision moves painfully amid an increasing number of cancellations and postponements, the Pac-12 will go out to fight in seven games in seven weeks, counting the convention championship on December 18, in an effort to catch up on the rest of the Five Leagues power.
If all goes according to plan, an undefeated Pac-12 champion would be competing for the fourth seed in the school playoffs, if three places were filled through Alabama, Ohio State and the ACC winner, either Clemson or Notre Dame. . Although not if the field is expected to have an effect on COVID-19, the Pac-12 has influenced two adjustments that can benefit the league’s playoff goals:
Rejected in his efforts to institute a one-year expansion of the playoff field, Scott controlled to maintain the first rating for a week until November 24, which gave Pac-12 groups a week of effect before the first screening committee assembly.
And the Pac-12 consulted with playoff executive director Bill Hancock and the playoff control committee to delay the convention championships for a week, a user familiar with the deliberations at USA TODAY Sports said, giving the convention an additional point of knowledge for show. Committee.
“We have seven opportunities. We have to make the most of them,” said USC coach Clay Helton. “The school’s football playoff committee has the hard work. Especially this year because they’re going to have groups that will have another number of games, another situation, and it’s going to be a complicated job. I don’t envy your work. “
Among other side frames, the tension for a spot in the playoffs is the dominant situation of the league’s abbreviated normal season.
The only two Pac-12 groups in the Amway Coach Survey, USC and No. Oregon 14 are the league’s most sensitive contenders for the 4 most sensitive and safest bet to face in the Championship game. Conference.
The Trojans returned to Field Marshal Kedon Slovis, who was a revelation as a true rookie in 2019, adding a new defensive coordinator to Todd Orlando and taking credit for Washington state as a cross-opponent of the Northern Division.
With Arizona down, Colorado in the first year of rebuilding with a new training staff, Utah facing an exodus of skill from last season’s department champions and UCLA remains an unpredictable product under Master Chip Kelly, the biggest Trojan control expected to take a stand on the opposite Saturday for the state of Arizona : A victory can lead USC to an undefeated normal season and security in the task.
Oregon has lost several key headlines, adding Quarterback Justin Herbert and long-term junior offensive lineman Penei Sewell, who decided not to participate in the season.
“I don’t think I’m helping you communicate about the playoffs right now,” Oregon coach Mario Cristobal said.
Ducks defeats imply a broader trend: only two of the 22 players who won the first team honors of the convention last season are expected to compete in 2020, either on the defensive side. Walker Little and Washington defensive lineman Levi Onwuzurike, to call still 3, have selected to prepare for the NFL draft next spring.
Not that there’s a shortage of celebrities, basically among the lower class. Slovis would have been a challenger to the Heisman Trophy for a full season, while Oregon defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux, also a sophodech student, is one of the promising young talents in school football overall, however, the league enters the season with a notable shortage of products shown.
And already the curve, the Pac-12 as a convention does not have the built-in credibility to automatically divert attention from the rest of the Power Five.
“We have to get back to the situation,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said in October. “We just spent a few years in which we didn’t have an elite team that could lead the board and get to the sensible thing about the national point. where you want to be decided for the playoffs. “
However, a path to the playoffs remains open. If the CCA and SEC fail to get ahead of themselves in a position at the moment with fewer than two losses, the Pac-12 can simply blow up the collapse of the big 12 and defend against a credible Cincinnati challenge to last place in the national semifinals.
The greatest urgent fear is whether the Pac-12 will be able to end a season long enough to take into account the debate. COVID-19 has already had an effect in the first 3 weeks of the Big Ten season, forcing Wisconsin to cancel games opposed to Nebraska and Purdue. Badgers, preseason applicants for a New Year’s bowl, are now about to be able to play enough games to be eligible for the convention championship.
Like the Big Ten, the Warm Pac-12 leaves no margin for error in an uninterrupted march towards the end of the normal season.
The convention is heading to the inaugural weekend “with cautious optimism,” Scott said. “To be a success and have cancellations, it will take a lot of surveillance from our coaches, student-athletes and their staff. “
The existing environment can simply force a redefinition of what constitutes a successful season.
“Being in the playoffs is obviously very vital in the general context of school football. But it has been a year where we have had to face great challenges,” Scott said. conference, if we had a school in the playoffs. But we also realize that we have less margin for error than others, since we are beaten and have fewer possible matches than others.