Rating the 2008 Non-Conference Slate, Part 5: Pac-10

Today, we take on some of college football's strongest schedules in everyone's favorite 3 OOC game league, the Pacific 10. As a conference, the Pac-10 has the best average scheduling and they also have the fewest number of games versus DI-AA opponents with two.

1. Southern California (2.75 legit, 0 D-IAA): @Virginia, Ohio State, Notre Dame. This is probably the best OOC schedule in the country this year. While we have no reason to think that Virginia or Notre Dame will be very good this year, they're still better than, say, your average WAC team. Oh, and yeah, there's that whole "Ohio State" thing that makes for probably the most interesting inter-sectional game of the year. USC deserves props for putting together this schedule at any rate, and using their OOC games as a national power should.
   
2. Washington (2.5, 0): Brigham Young, Oklahoma, Notre Dame. While no one is exactly jumping with joy over playing Washington, this is still a pretty good schedule. Two legitimate games and BYU usually isn't a pushover. Unfortunately for Washington, they're entirely likely to go 0-3 against this schedule. Oh, and also they're apparently trying to change their awesomely out-of-date fight song. I mean, how can you go wrong with lines like The boys are there with bells / Their fighting blood excels / It's harder to push them across the the line than to cross the Dardanelles. (Just to make it clear, I am not being sarcastic here.)
   
3. Oregon State (2.25, 0): @Pennsylvania State, Hawaii, @Utah. We're taking a break from the 2 BCS team schedules here to bring one that's still pretty darn strong. Two road games, one surprising at Utah, but still. While OSU should still win 2/3 of here, it's not a terrible schedule by any means.
   
4. California-Los Angeles (2, 0): Fresno State, Tennessee, @Brigham Young. Did Fresno regain their mojo last year? While an early test at Rutgers will tell a lot, they also play the boys from LA which should be a demonstration of whether either team made progress. UCLA also has Tennessee's Annual West Coast Road Trip and a date in Provo that makes this a darn good schedule.
   
5. California (1.5, 0): Michigan State, @Maryland, Colorado State. While this schedule lacks the sex appeal of some of the earlier schedules without a "name" big conference opponent, it's still got plenty of meat, especially if CSU doesn't suck this year.
   
6. Oregon (1.5, 0): Utah State, @Purdue, Boise State. This is where it starts to go a little downhill, but for most conferences that usually happens much earlier than at 6th place. Still, good inter-sectional matchup over in West Lafayette and a BCS team playing Boise State is always intriguing. Still, Utah State pretty much sucks.
   
7. Arizona State (1, 1): Northern Arizona, Nevada-Los Vegas, Georgia. Nothing to write home about here, except for, oh, yeah, the first time the University of Georgia has traveled west of Arkansas or Louisiana or north of the Ohio River for a (regular season) football game since 1965. Should be interesting, at any rate. The rest of this schedule sucks, as ASU is one of only 2 Pac-10 teams to play a DI-AA team.
   
8. Washington State (1, 1): N-Oklahoma State, @Baylor, Portland State. And here's the other! While this technically features 2 BCS teams, one of them is Baylor. The OSU game will be in Seattle as well, presumably to sell more tickets to Oklahoma State fans. I've put the "N" next to it, but I suspect the game will technically a "home" game for Wazzou.
   
9. Stanford (1, 0): @Texas Christian, @San Jose State, @Notre Dame. Fun fact: Stanford managed to have a schedule with only four home games on it. Stanford football, catch the fever! (Just not in Palo Alto.) Maybe I should try going to the Stanford@SJSU game just for the heck of it.
   
10. Arizona (0, 0): Idaho, Toledo, @New Mexico. This is usually where I rail against terrible schedules, and well, I'm going to do it again. This schedule is terrible. Even though they play no DI-AA teams, and Toledo and New Mexico aren't terrible, every other team in this conference managed to play at least one BCS team from somewhere on their schedule, and the best you could do was this? Shame you on, Arizona.
    

Next, we'll wrap up the detailed overview part of this series with the SEC.