Pac-12 Football Media Day Wrap-up

The Pac-12 held their annual media day Wednesday, and the media voted on their predicted outcome for the 2014 season. The following really should be no surprise to anyone.

Pac-12 Media Poll, North edition.
1. Oregon (37 1st place votes)
2. Stanford (2)
3. Washington
4. Oregon State
5. Washington State
6. Cal

Pac-12 Media Poll, South edition
1. UCLA (37 1st place votes)
2. USC (1)
3. Arizona State (1)
4. Arizona
5. Utah
6. Colorado

As you can see, Utah was picked 5th in the South Division of the conference, which shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone. Although, many could possibly argue that Utah could be above Arizona, but given the last two seasons, 5th is justified.

Oregon was picked to beat UCLA in the Pac-12 championship and it will be interesting to see how two-time defending conference champ, Stanford, will react to this.

Coach Whittingham was at media day, as was Nate Orchard and Dres Anderson. Here are their interviews with the Pac-12 Network.

Here are some quotes from Coach Whitt from his press conference (courtesy of the Pac-12):

Q. On Utah player Harvey Langi:
COACH WHITTINGHAM: I've met with him and his family. He's in the process of making a decision. Bottom line, whatever he feels is best for him, we wish him all the best. We're hoping
obviously that he plays in Utah, but whatever he openly decides we'll wish him well.
Q. Any kind of problems with that?
COACH WHITTINGHAM: No comment on that. We'll just move forward from that, I guess.

Q. On if the transition to the Pac-12 was as expected:
COACH WHITTINGHAM: Yeah, the transition from the Pac-12 or to the Pac-12 was as expected. I don't think there is anything that caught us by surprise. I can tell you the thing that's really been very apparent is the Pac-12 in 2011 when we entered and the Pac-12 Now is far superior from top to bottom in the progress this conference has made in the last few years is phenomenal. They've put themselves in a position where we put ourselves in position where we're arguably one of the top two conferences in the country.

Q. On Dres sharing the load with Kenneth Scott:
COACH WHITTINGHAM: He's a big part of that. We lost him in game one. We've got him back at full strength this year. Kaelin Clay seems to be a guy that takes some of the pressure off. Dominique Hatfield is a kid that dominated from the end of last season. So there are three or four of those guys that need to step up and take some of the stress off of what Dres is doing.

See the rest here.

The Pac-12 bloggers for SBNation did a media poll as well, and it's not too different from the actual media poll, check it out here.