fukk all the numbers of points, that's such a terrible way to articulate how good a team is. Margin of victory doesn't take into account a lot of other shyt.
Michigan State was not the same this year and they were on the road that game. In control the entire game until they choked and Oregon made some phenomenal plays and tacked on a meaningless touchdown at the end to cover the spread and run the score up.
UCLA is mediocre as fukk and Oregon coming off the Arizona loss so it made sense for Oregon to bounce back and beat'em.
FSU was not that good they just got lucky as fukk all season and were riding off of momentum from last year, that's why they were ranked top four. Anybody watching their games knew this wasn't the same dominant team that was blowing people out last year. Their penchant for turnovers killed them because ORegon doesn't turn the ball over, or didn't, rather.
FSU fell behind all year but climbed back because other teams turned the ball over or couldn't turn them over in the second half.
FSU wasn't subbing people out fast enough on defense and got murdered by their tempo in the Rose bowl, also the turnovers killed them.
Other pac-12 teams: Stanford wasn't the same and was on the road, Utah catastrophically imploded and just about every other team isn't worth naming. It was Oregon's year and they took advantage of it, but they were a gimmicky team that padded Mariota's stats.
Washington State was one of the teams that played them well, but so what? Washington State was still a shytty team, sometimes weird things happen in games.
Man, you really had to reach reach reach with that one.
No one number tells you how good a team is, but margin of victory (taking quality of opponent into consideration, of course) is a better indicator of a team's future success than any other number. A good team will build a big lead early and put their backups in early if they can. Getting huge 3rd-quarter leads against quality opponents is better than having to go deep into the 4th to beat those teams.
I just have to laugh at how hard you tried to dismiss the domination in the FSU game.
You just plain spouting bs about the MSU game - no one "ran up the score". Mariota took over with 8 minutes left and a 12-point lead, and executed a perfect 11-play, 6:31 minute drive to run out the clock and put the game away. That's not running up the score, that's perfect football. What did you expect him to do, kneel on it and give MSU the ball back down only 2 scores with a couple minutes left?
Oh, and Mariota was 18-27 for 318 yards and 3 TDs (no INTs) plus 42 yards on 9 carries on the ground, and turned a 27-18 3rd-quarter deficit into a 46-27 win on the strength of four straight 50+ yard TD drives. Don't act like that win was some luck or that Mariota wasn't impressive as hell in it.
And what do you mean MSU was
not the same team
this year? It was
this year that they started #6 and
this year that they finished #5 and
this year that Oregon beat them down.
"mediocre" UCLA finished #10 in the nation with 4 top-25 wins, including KSU, Arizona, ASU, and USC. And they
dominated ASU and USC. Besides Oregon, their only losses were a last-second FG to #21 Utah and a game they blew against #27 Stanford. Where do you get "mediocre" for a team that finished 10-3 against a schedule with 7 top-27 opponents?
Utah finished 9-4, won three of their last four after Oregon, including their bowl game, and finished #21. How you saying they imploded?
And the way you talk about the WSU/Arizona/UCLA games. Oregon was massive hurting in that stretch because they lost their RT, LT, backup RT, backup LG, and backup RG with injuries, and they were already weak at those positions after some early retirements and position switches over the last couple years. They started a true FR and a walk-on at the tackles for that stretch and had another FR as the main backup at guard/center, which is pretty much suicide. They got ONE guy back and they were fine again. Their struggles in that stretch had nothing to do with "weird things happen" and the improvement afterwards wasn't no "bounce back" after a loss.