What do Cade McNown, Todd Husak and Marques Tuiososopo have in common? They were Pac-10 seniors that led their teams to the Rose Bowl in the past three years. In the six of the last seven years, a senior quarterback has led the conference winner, and in as many years,  seven different Pac-10 teams have appeared in the Rose Bowl.

In addition to having a senior quarterback, little things make a big difference in the Parity-10--like having a veteran coaching staff, a plethora of returning starters, a favorable road schedule and a distinct home-field advantage.

Since Oregon has most of these ingredients, look for it to win the Pac-10 conference title. Oregon has only one tough game on the road, which is against UCLA, while the rest of its toughies are at home, where it has a distinct advantage playing in its din of inequity, Autzen Stadium. They don’t measure fan noise in decibels at Autzen Stadium, they measure it on the Richter Scale. Oregon has won 20 straight games at home.

Optimism runs so high in Eugene that they are hyping Senior quarterback Joey Harrington for the Heisman Trophy.

Oregon has had seven consecutive winning seasons, the best in the Pac-10. They return 8 starters on offense, but only 4 on defense. It’s on defense, where their title hopes could crumble.

Since Oregon is our clear-cut favorite to win the Pac-10, how do we rate the conference as a whole? We've constructed a table and rated all the teams based on "little things data," such as the year in school of the starting quarterback, the number of returning starters, home-field advantage, the road schedule and the coach’s record in the conference.

Forget about all those blue chippers that UCLA and USC have corralled over the past several years. Since parity prevails in this conference from top to bottom, quality doesn’t count and size doesn’t matter. Little things mean a lot more.

We constructed two “little things” tables, which are shown below, describing the factors we deem important in determining a conference champion.  

In Table 1, we list the parameters that feed into Table 2, which rates the teams from top to bottom. For example, in Table 1, Oregon Coach Mike Bellotti has won 69% of his games in the Pac-10, Oregon has a home-field advantage of 13 points, has one tough road game and returns 12 starters. Quarterback Joey Harrington is a senior. In Table 2, we give Oregon 10 points for having a senior quarterback, subtract a point for its one tough road game against UCLA, give it 13 points for its home-field advantage, 12 points for its returning starters and 3 points for having a veteran, winning coaching staff in the Pac-10--all of which totals 37 points. 

The field, "Returning Starters," also includes the punter and kicker. Table 3 lists the road games for which we feel each team could easily lose. The team schedules for the Pac-10 follow.

In Table 2, we give zero points for experience to the new coaches in the Pac-10 (Pete Carroll, John Mackovic and Dirk Koetter). The winning percentages listed relate to their past coaching experience. 

Of course, this doesn't mean you can't construct your own tables or just plain guess to determine a conference champion. This is our best guess, which doesn't mean squat. Have fun. 

Since we're going out on a limb, we might as well completely saw it off with our picks for freshmen of the year in the Pac-10:

Nic Costa, QB, Arizona 
Reggie Williams, wide receiver, Washington

Table 1. Little Things Table

Legend: QB-Quarterback; Yr-Year in School; Coach-Head Coach;
Rec-Head Coach's record; HFA-Home Field Advantage; RG-Road games where team could easily lose; RS-Returning Starters

Table 2. Little Things Mean a Lot More Table

Legend: QB-Quarterback, TRG-Tough Road games, HFA-home field advantage, RS-returning starters, CS-successful coaching experience in the Pac-10, and the Total Points. 

Table 3. Toughies on the road

 Table 4. 2001 Pac-10 Football Schedule