Washington’s upset of the Stanford Cardinal last night was shocking-but-not-shocking; it was shocking because the Husky Defense contained one of the conference’s best running backs (they held Stepfan Taylor to 3.6 yards a carry) but it wasn’t shocking because of how bad Josh Nunes looked, he single handedly killed Cardinal drives with terrible passes. Basically Washington has made my Pac-12 power rankings extremely chaotic.

Add in the fact that the rest of the conference has yet to play and you begin to realize that Sunday night/Monday morning writing of the Pac-12 Power Rankings is going to be a major pain. Thus I’ve decided that I want to see all the upsets!!! I want the Pac-12 to completely and utterly cannibalize its self for our pure entertainment value; after all the conferences strong non-conference showing insures that it will just be considered a strong conference beating up on its self and that is a welcome change after the last couple of seasons where the Pac-12 was considered weak. To cannibalize its self-there are going to have to be more upsets in conference play this week. And after the jump we will take a look at games that I could see these upsets occurring in.

Arizona’s loss at #2 Oregon was more of a reminder of how good the Ducks are. And the Beavers continued to look very good against a tough (am I really about to type this?) UCLA squad. Now they get to continue their tough Pac-12 South road trip with a trip to Arizona against a rejuvenated Wildcat squad with an offensive master-mind in Rich Rodriguez. Both teams have talented QBs in Sophomore Sean Mannion for Oregon State and Red Shirt Senior Matt Scott for Arizona. 

This ball game should be a shootout and it is going to come down to which defense can make the most stops. It should be an interesting game and one that very well could lead to another upset and thus adding more chaos to the Pac-12 landscape. In other words, if you can watch this game you should.

Colorado’s come from behind, upset, win of Washington State last week didn’t really hurt my power rankings all that much (granted it pretty much the sports portion of my heart). UCLA lost a close game against an Oregon State team that looks a lot like the OSU teams from the mid-2000s. And Colorado looks a lot like the 2009 Cougars, those Cougs were gifted their only win of the season by Bo Levi Mitchell. As for UCLA they look like a much improved squad in their first season under Jim Mora Jr. He has changed the mentality of their players and it has led to their 3-1 start, look for these guys to be an eight or nine win team this year.

This ball game should be low scoring because of the aggressiveness of UCLA’s defense and the derpfest that is Colorado’s offense (until the Cougar defense melted down in the fourth quarter Colorado’s offense looked helpless). UCLA should win this game handily. That being said this game is in Boulder and it is after Jon Embree’s young squad came back from a 17-point deficit to win on the road. It’s going to be an emotionally charged atmosphere and it should be interesting to see how the Buffaloes and Bruins react to this situation. This game is not a must see, or even should see, but it definitely is a game that you might want to watch if you have the time.

There you have it, my upset alerts for the Pac-12 this week.