Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
The Pac-12 cannot have nice things.
That’s the dispatch Friday night from Santa Clara, where the conference ate its own. The Pac-12 watched its championship game turn into a College Football Playoff elimination game. Utah, the shining hope of a downtrodden league, played the first half with the poise of a herd of panicked wildebeest in a 37-15 loss to Oregon.
And so the weakest of the Power Five conferences will miss the playoff for the third straight season, and for the fourth time in the six years of the playoff’s existence.