Oregon Tabbed as Preseason Favorite

Last night I decided on the eve of Pac-12 media day to go through the entire conference schedule and pick all the winners on first instinct in order to formulate my own Pac-12 preseason poll. As it turns out, my results are exactly the same as the official pac-12 preseason media poll revealed today which is as follows:

North:
1. Oregon
2. Stanford
3. Oregon State
4. Washington
5. California
6. Washington State

South:
1. UCLA
2. Arizona State
3. USC
4. Arizona
5. Utah
6. Colorado

Oregon barely won the North poll over Stanford with 145 points to Stanford's 139 but was a little more decisive in the title winner poll, taking 14 out of 25 votes. By the way, how are there only 25 voters for this? The SEC had 243 people voting on their conference champion at SEC Media Days. Hey Larry Scott, I'm available, I watch every snap of all Pac-12 football games and I like voting for stuff. Give me a call buddy.

What does this mean? not much really. You might remember that USC garnered 83% of the first place votes last year and ended up in Waco, Texas while Stanford did not get a single first place vote. I do think this provides a bit of a window into the thinking of the Pac-12 media as a whole and it shows that less and less people are buying into Oregon's demise. When Chip Kelly jetted for Philadelphia and impending sanctions were still looming, it was all doom and gloom and a lot of prominent voices were trying to draw parallels between 2013 Oregon and 2010 USC. Then the sanctions finally dropped and revealed benign punishments, and then media folk got a chance to start listening to Mark Helfrich work a room and suddenly, as evidenced by the poll above, people are back on the Oregon bandwagon.

I'll have a recap with important tidbits and quotes and what everything means from all things Pac-12 media day as well as the next player in the Top 40 countdown up tonight. Stay tuned y'all.