The Pac-10 will remain the same this season but next year online betting fans will notice a change as the conference will be renamed the Pac-12. With the addition of Colorado and Utah, the conference will go from 10 teams to 12 teams. The conference may get a little more attention from Internet betting handicappers since they will have two more teams.
Online betting odds do not favor a Pac-10 team to win the national championship in college football this season. USC is on the way down and while the rest of the conference does have good teams, they do not have a great team. The addition of Utah to the conference should help the overall strength of the conference though but that will not happen until 2011. Utah has been a strong mid-major team for many seasons and their addition to the Pac-10 is a positive. The addition of Colorado is really a non-factor since the Buffaloes are not that strong in either football or basketball.
The Pac-10 will be changing in a number of ways starting in 2011. With the addition of Colorado and Utah, the Pac-12 will have a new football schedule and they will also have a championship game for the first time. The conference is trying to put together a schedule for the 2011 college football season in which the nine-game league schedule is kept. The conference will be split into two divisions so that a championship game can be played. Teams would play five games in their division and four games against teams from the other division. The big rivalry games like Arizona-Arizona State, USC-UCLA, Stanford-Cal, Oregon-Oregon State and Washington-Washington State will remain. What might change is when these games are played. They have been scheduled for the latter part of the season but that is going to change in 2011. The conference wants to make sure that a rematch of one of those games doesn’t take place on back-to-back weeks and that could occur if the teams meet in the regular season finale and then play again in the conference championship.
Internet betting on the Pac-10 will not change this season but next season it will get more interesting as two teams are added and the Pac-12 is born.