Just as we all thought would happen before the season started, USC and Oregon will play in the PAC-12 Championship game, though both teams took a chaotic path to get there.

Due to COVID protocol, the washington huskies (3-1) have declined their invitation to play in the PAC-12 Championship due to a lack of scholarship players. Which led to an announcement from the PAC-12 powers that Oregon, with the tie-breaker over Stanford, would take their place.

FROM THE PAC-12 CONFERENCE TWITTER ACCOUNT

“The PAC-12 has, after consultation with Washington, made the decision to replace Washington with Oregon as the PAC-12 North Division team to face South Division champion USC in the PAC-12 Football Championship Game scheduled for Friday, December 18th.”

“This decision was made under the Pac-12’s football game cancellation policy and Football Championship Game policy due to Washington neither having the minimum 53 scholarship student-athletes available for the game nor the minimum number of scholarship student-athletes at a position group, in each case as a result of a number of positive football student-athlete COVID-19 cases and resulting isolation of additional football student-athletes under contact tracing protocols.”

USC is the conference’s only undefeated team at 5-0, and in three of those contests (ASU, Arizona, UCLA) the Trojans needed late touchdown drives to overcome some shaky play. Sophomore quarterback Kedon Slovis is coming off of back-to-back five-touchdown performances against Washington State and UCLA, and has tallied 1,601 yards, 15 TDS and 4 INTs this season.

If USC were forced to cancel, then Colorado (4-1, 3-1) would take their place.

GO DUCKS!