The Pac-12's Bowl-Win Count Is On ... and Already 0-1

Here it is, another holiday season, and someone had better be decking the halls with more than boughs of holly.

Or the fa-la-la-la-la will be on them.

More like, ho-ho-ho's, actually.

The Pac-12's been living with barrels of laughs ever since last year's bowl season, when its members racked up a rotten 1-8 record.

 

Since then, nothing's really happened to salvage the Pac-12's reputation.

This is the case even though -- in Power 5 vs Power 5 non-cons -- it was merely mediocre by comparison:

This is surely a reason why, for example, the CFB Selection Committee put the 9-4 Texas Longhorns into the lucrative New Year's Six lineup and snubbed the 10-2 Washington State Cougars.

There are other factors in non-con fortunes, of course, and no team realizes this more than Wazzu.

 

But still.

Could that diss also be because the Cougs got walloped, 42-17, by Michigan State in last season's Holiday Bowl?

This was only one of three triple-score blowouts the conference suffered. The other two:

• UCLA couldn't hold a lead and wound up getting hammered, 35-17, by Kansas State in the Cactus Bowl, and
• Arizona State got buzz-bombed, 52-31, by North Carolina State in the Sun Bowl.

 

The conference has mega-territory to reclaim this season if it wants the perception to change.

However, it couldn't count on Arizona State to lead the charge.

Mountain West champion Fresno State doused the Sun Devils in the Las Vegas Bowl, 31-20:

 

Now, do know that the top-end Mountain West teams can hold their own against a cohort of Power Five clubs, and former CalBears coach Jeff Tedford knows the Pac-12 well.

This result was not a surprise. St Herman may have gotten the Devils within a game of the Pac-12 South title, but all things considered, that and a fiver will spend at Starbucks.

 

Six more Pac-12 teams are on this season's holiday schedule. Only Washington is an underdog; Bovada is giving the Huskies 7 points in the Rose Bowl against Ohio State.

For the conference's sake, a few of them had best act like it.