is the pac-10 severely overrated?

yes.

okay, USC is far and away the best team in the country, as it proved by thoroughly demolishing no. 5 ohio state last night in a highly anticipated matchup that turned out to be a snooze. and QB mark sanchez is proving that it doesn't really matter who you are; if you're calling the plays for the trojans, you will probably be a heisman candidate.

but things get uglier from there.

no. 23 cal kicked the day off by getting dominated by the unranked terrapins, representing a resurgent acc conference. don't let the final 35-27 score and QB kevin riley's 423 yards fool you. the golden bears managed just six points through three quarters, looking even worse than they did last year against oregon state.

the day didn't get too much brighter for the west coast's dime. UCLA suffered its worst loss in almost 80 years, getting routed 59-0 by the non-bcs BYU cougars. stanford was as vanilla as usual against texas christian, losing 31-14. washington state and washington made the evergreen state proud by dropping to 0-3 against baylor and oklahoma, respectively. the beavers got destroyed by hawaii, and arizona lost to new mexico.

and it's not like the ranked teams did much better. other than cal's slumbering stumble, no. 15 arizona state was bounced by UNLV in double-overtime. only oregon managed to salvage some of the day for the pac-10 by coming from two touchdowns down against purdue to win in the extra period.

so, if you take pete carroll out of the equation, we're looking at a conference that has four ranked teams and claims to be able to go toe-to-toe with conferences like the SEC and the big 12 but flounders against unimpressive competition. why does anyone respect the pac-10, again?

more importantly, is there any way USC won't go undefeated en route to yet another bcs title game? with all nine of their remaining contests featuring pac-10 opponents, the trojans certainly aren't a team to bet against.