I don't see us losing at home this year
We're going to look like the '72 UCLA Bruins out there compared to the flaming pile of dog **** that our football team is, but we're likely going to struggle a bit early and not have a great OOC record given all the new guys out there. We'll be lucky to come out of Puerto Rico 2-1 (Wichita is going to abuse us), I think we probably trip up on one of the CO road games, and UGA will be tough. It's going to take a few weeks to get some cohesion out there -- Carlon Brown and SHT haven't played in a long time and Dinwiddie and Booker will need to get adjusted to the speed of the game. If there was ever a year to do an overseas summer tour, this would have been it.
UGA is going to be tough at home, especially with CU coming off 4 straight games away from home (Puerto Rico tip off + AFA). I could see us easily losing that one
Washington on 1/5 will be tough, and with no students around it could be a lame atmosphere for such a big game. Hopefully we've found ourselves some scores by then - Washington will have the occasional off-game, but it usually takes lots of points (at least 85 if not 90) to beat them.
Arizona will be extremely tough to beat. It'll be one hell of an atmosphere, but we're simply outmatched against them.
Oregon and Cal will both be tricky. I tend to think a lot of publications are over-hyping Oregon, but both Oregon and Cal should be improved. Good chance they're both in the top half of the league however.
Overall, both home and away, it's going to be an adjustment having just a 1 day break between so many league games. That might bite us in the ass while we get used to it, i.e. upsetting Washington and then turning around and losing to Wazzu or something. We've got 16 home games, I think we likely go ~13-3 at home:
I'll say:
Ft. Lewis: W
Georgia: L
Fresno State: W
Wyoming: W
CSU Bakersfield: W
Texas Southern: W
New Orleans: W
Utah: W
Washington: W
Washington State: L
Arizona State: W
Arizona: L
Oregon State: W
Oregon: W
Stanford: W
Cal: L
13-3 at home would be extremely solid considering how much we have to replace. The Pac-12 slate looks a lot less daunting than the recent Big XII, that's for sure. There will be 2 or 3 games against NCAA Tournament caliber teams at home as opposed to the 5 or 6 of the Big XII. I see "winnable" league games all over the place - aside from ArizonaX2 and @ UCLA, it's hard to find many (if any) games where you would say "there's very little chance CU wins". Missing UCLA at home this year sucks though, our first year in the Pac and we miss one of the biggest attractions of the entire Pac -- UCLA basketball.
