Have Your Say! Predict the Pac-12 Final Standings

With the start of the college football season just one week away, it's time to draw on the football knowledge of the Bruins Nation community to project how the Pac-12 season will turn out. The predictions of the Bruins Nation team will be revealed on Saturday; in the meantime, we'd like to know how you think the title races will play out.

Before I give you the chance to make your Pac-12 predictions, let's have a look at a few of the conference projections from various media outlets. While it's probably fair to say that most of these "experts" are knowledgeable about college football in general, that doesn't guarantee that they have any particular depth of knowledge about Pac-12 football. And even though the Pac-12 media poll is a survey of writers who cover a Pac-12 team, the Pac-12 media poll has never correctly picked the Pac-12 South winner.

Let's see what the "experts" have to say, starting with a look at CBS Sports' projection of the Pac-12 race:

The only thing that the CBS "experts" are in unanimous agreement about is that the Colorado Buffaloes will finish last in the Pac-12 South. The consensus opinion is that Oregon and Stanford will finish first and second, respectively, in the Pac-12 North, and that USC and ASU will battle for the Pac-12 South title. Interestingly, as many CBS' "experts" picked USC to finish third as first, whereas ASU garnered first and second place votes only. As you can see, the Bruins received one first place vote and two second place votes.

The Bruins didn't fare much better in the Pac-12 preseason media poll:

Once again, Oregon is the favorite to capture the Pac-12 North title, but in the Pac-12 media poll, USC is a strong consensus Pac-12 South winner. UCLA again is projected to finish third.

The projected final conference standings by Stewart Mandel at Fox Sports are slightly kinder to the Bruins:

Mandel predicts the Sun Devils will finish 8-1 in the conference to win the Pac-12 South handily, while Oregon squeezes past Stanford for the Pac-12 North crown. Mandel places UCLA in a tie for second place with the Trojans.

Over at SB Nation's Pacific Takes, the outlook for the Bruins isn't much different:

Pac-12 North

Pac-12 South

In this case, the Bruins are predicted to finish in a tie for second place with ASU, while the Ducks and Trojans comfortably win the North and South, respectively.

Lastly, I thought it would be fun to share the results of a survey taken by the California Golden Blogs community:

As you'd expect, the California Golden Bears do much better in this projection than in others. In fact, according to the CGB community, Cal finishes ahead of Stanford by virtue of the head-to-head tiebreaker. The other prediction here that stands out is the CGB projection that ASU will finish in fifth place in the Pac-12 South.

Now it's your turn. Use the form below to enter your predictions for the final standings in the Pac-12 North and South. In any instance in which you think there will be a tie, apply predicted head-to-head results to break the tie. In other words, for each division, there should be one first place team, one second place team, one third place team, etc...

Use the link at the bottom of the survey to view the current results after you've voted. Also, for those brave souls who want to go on record with their predictions, please share your thoughts in the comments below. Finally, please add your vote to the final poll about UCLA's final conference record. I'm looking forward to seeing the collective wisdom of the Bruins Nation community.

Go BRUINS!