Sports Illustrated Predicts!

Snoozefest ensues.

I haven’t paid any attention to the “expert” picks for the conferences on SI.com until today.

Boy was I missing nothing!

The SI.com experts predict the following regular season finish for the Pac 10 -


USC 12-0
Cal 9-3
UCLA 9-3
Oregon 7-5
Oregon St 7-5
Arizona St 7-5
Washington St 6-6
Arizona 5-7
Washington 5-8
Stanford 2-10

The USC call was preordained by the pre-season hype, but for the rest of the conference, the predicted results might look a little familiar.

Why?

Because they are almost exactly the same results as the teams finished last year.

Adjusting for situations in which another game was played, the “expert predictions” that are the same as last year are –

Cal at 9-3
Oregon at 7-5
Arizona State at 7-5 (was 7-6 with an extra game)
Washington State at 6-6
Washington at 5-8 (was 5-7 with one less game)

Then you have these bold changes –

Oregon State to lose one more (from 8-4 to 7-5)
Arizona to lose one more (from 6-6 to 5-7)
Stanford to win one more (from 1-11 to 2-10)

Then the really bold call – UCLA to go from 7-5 to 9-3.

Looking briefly at their other SI.com conference calls – more of the same “past as prelude”. Of the 8 Big East teams for instance, 4 have exactly the same predicted records as 2006, and the other 4 have a change of only a single win-loss.

Way to be bold experts!

Lastly, in regard to the Pac 10, can you really make the argument (ad nauseum) that the Pac 10 is the “second hardest conference” when you expect “the Trojans to coast through conference play” (SI.com’s exact words).

And, how much talent is there when you expect no other team to do better than 9-3 for the entire season?

LSU may or may not be the SEC’s best this year, but no reasonable observer expects them to “coast” through the SEC.

Let's play the games already...