The Vegas Bowl could actually provide a good opponent this year. They take the Pac 12 #5 team and after last weekend, it looks like that could be a close to ranked (possibly ranked) team. As a matter of fact, 5 teams in the Pac 12 are ranked this week.

Here's why I'm thinking this year's Pac 12 Vegas Bowl participant will be a higher caliber going through the top teams in no particular order:

-USC is bowl eligible again. The last couple of years Vegas was actually getting the #6 team in the Pac because they weren't allowed to fill a higher bowl spot.

-Oregon is awesome as usual

-UCLA looks relevant. They've actually won 2 non-conference games and one of them was against a ranked Nebraska.

-Oregon State is (cross your fingers) back. Or maybe Wisconsin is just that bad.

-Arizona beat up on Oklahoma State

-Arizona State has talent, looks solid and it actually look like the players give a crap again - unlike under Erickson when then went into a tailspin last year.

If we're rooting for a good bowl opponent, we don't really care about teams 6-12 in the Pac 12. As a matter of fact, we want them to go 2-10 and not win any PAC 12 games at all. It looks like this could be the case for multiple teams. Utah looks horrible, Wazzu is Wazzu, Colorado is off the charts bad. I personally think that Stanford is pretty bad as well. Any team who has to hang on against San Jose State has issues - I don't care how badly you beat Duke. Hard to say how good or bad Washington is after they get killed by LSU. Could go into a tailspin.

So it looks like there could be 6 teams could have very solid records this year as they succeed in the non-conference and then beat up on the low lifes of the conference. In other words, we won't have to settle for a 6-6 team Pac 12 team if we don't get the BCS. I'm at least a little excited at this prospect. Are any of these points flawed?