Seasons On the Line for Both Stanford, Oregon State Football

In the weirdness that is the Pac-12 football season, both the Stanford Cardinal and Oregon State Beavers have two conference losses, yet the winner of Saturday’s game still has a chance to win the conference championship.

It’s a season on the line for both teams. Stanford enters the game with three overall losses, having gone down to Notre Dame as well as the USC Trojans and Arizona State Sun Devils. Oregon State also suffered defeat at the hands of the Trojans, and their other loss was in double-overtime to the resurgent Utah Utes.

The Cardinal have already entered territory they’ve not been in for years. Three losses? Before November? Why, the last time that happened was 2009, Jim Harbaugh‘s third year as head coach, when Andrew Luck was a redshirt freshman. That Stanford team was certainly on the way up. This one … Not so much. Kevin Hogan isn’t a top quarterback and is without an elite running game, and since head coach David Shaw says it will be running back by committee again this week, that’s not a good sign.

On the other side, Oregon State quarterback Sean Mannion enters the game just 316 yards away from becoming the Pac-12’s all-time passing yardage leader. OSU will throw the ball. Stanford’s defense is pretty much the reason the Cardinal don’t have at least four losses.

So far, the Beavers have beaten the bad teams and lost to the good teams. So which is Stanford? Is Oregon State a good bad team, or a bad good team? This game will show what kind of team both squads really are.

If the winner uses this game to somehow flip a switch they haven’t found so far and doesn’t lose the rest of the season, they will be the North Division champion because both teams still have the Oregon Ducks on the schedule (Stanford is in Eugene next week; Oregon State hosts the Ducks on Thanksgiving weekend).

Two conference losses and still with a chance to win the division and the conference championship? That’s the Pac-12, people. Embrace the weirdness. The winner of this one certainly will.

Alex Drude is a Pac-12 writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @Alex_Drude. “Like” him on Facebook and add him to your network on Google+.