From the Sports Desk

Tonight (7:00 pm), the No. 1 ranked, repeat national champion University of Georgia Bulldogs, holders of the 2021 and 2022 championship belts, host the unranked University of Alabama - Birmingham Blazers. The Bulldogs are 40.5-point favorites.

There’s really nothing more to be said about the game, except this is the last non-conference cupcake on Georgia’s schedule this year, with the possible exception of their traditional season-ending grudge match against in-state rival Georgia Tech. After this game and until Tech, it’s all SEC teams, including three currently ranked teams (Florida, Mississippi and Tennessee). It gets better after this week.

But boy howdy, what a day we have today otherwise! The Big Game today is arguably No. 6 Ohio State at No. 9 Notre Dame, but I can’t stand either team - with a white-hot, borderline psychopathic hatred of the Irish - so I don’t care. The Buckeyes are 3.5-point favorites, but I wish there was a way both teams could somehow lose.

There’s also a big SEC showdown today, with No. 13 Alabama hosting No. 15 Ole Miss. Alabama’s looking uncharacteristically vulnerable this year, and 3-0 Ole Miss might turn out to be the toughest team on Georgia’s schedule this year, but that’s not the game that everyone’s looking forward to today.

Like most of the rest of America (apparently), I’m looking forward to this afternoon’s Colorado vs Oregon game. Buffaloes against Ducks. The Sanders family vs. Bonix. Coach Prime vs. Dan Lanning. PAC-12 underdog vs PAC-12 powerhouse.

There are so many angles to this game to make it interesting, not the least of which is it’s the first big test to see if Colorado, one of the worst college football teams in the country last year (1-11), has really turned it around this year under new coach Deion Sanders. Bonix & the Dux are 21-point favorites, so the consensus opinion is that despite a good, 3-0 start against TCU, Nebraska, and Colorado State, the Buffaloes are not ready for the Big Time yet and will get wrecked by the elite, nationally ranked, PAC-12 big boys.

But those of us who like our underdogs are hoping that Coach Prime and his sons can prove the naysayers wrong once again. They were “supposed” to lose every game so far this season. But if they can put enough defensive pressure on Bonix, if Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders can find some open receivers, if Prime Time can outguess Coach Lanning. . . anything can happen.

But the even bigger story here is the PAC-12 itself. This was a conference that was self-destructing all year. The big, glamorous Southern California teams (USC and UCLA) both bolted for the Big-10, and then the other teams followed, joining the ACC, the Big-12, and other conferences, until there were only 2 teams left (Oregon State and Washington State) and even they are looking to move to the Mountain West.

The Pacific Coast Conference has been around in one form or another since 1915. As long as I’ve known about college football, teams like USC, Stanford, and Washington were always in the championship conversations. For years, the Rose Bowl game in Pasadena was the de facto national title game before the modern playoff system evolved.

College football without a PAC-12 conference seemed unthinkable until suddenly there was no more PAC-12 conference. This is the conference’s last year.

But it’s going out with a roar. Eight of the currently ranked Top 25 teams are from the PAC-12. Those 8 teams are all undefeated - not a single loss among them after some 24 games.

Today’s Colorado-Oregon game is the most anticipated game in the country this week, but on top of that, we also have:

• No. 11 Utah (3-0) vs No. 22 UCLA (3-0)
• No. 14 Oregon State (3-0) vs No. 21 Washington State (3-0)
• No. 5 USC (3-0) vs unranked Arizona State (1-2)
• No. 8 Washington (3-0) vs unranked California (2-1)

That’s quite a bit for a conference that was supposed to be a laughingstock this season, that seemed about to be embarrassed out of existence. I’m still a fanatical SEC fan, but as improbable as it might seem, it appears that for at least this one season, the geographic center of football supremacy has shifted a little to the west.

That’s Week Four. Enjoy, and GO DAWGS!