Washington Out Of Pac-12 Title Game; Oregon Will Face USC For Conference Crown

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Just four days before the Pac-12 Championship game was scheduled to be played, a change has been made.

The Washington Huskies won the Pac-12 North Division with a 3-1 record this season. They were not able to play against Oregon last week due to COVID-19 cases within their program. According to head coach Jimmy Lake, the Huskies don’t have any offensive linemen available for the game. Now, Washington is not able to play this week against the USC Trojans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

The Oregon Ducks will not face the Trojans on Friday, December 18 in Los Angeles. When the schedule for Week 7 came out on Sunday, the Pac-12 scheduled Oregon to play against Colorado at the Coliseum just in case either USC or Washington was not able to play.

The Pac-12 Conference released the following statement on Monday afternoon regarding the change in the title game.

“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 18,” the statement read. “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. Under Pac-12 Football Championship Game policy, the team with the next best record in the North Division, Oregon, will represent the North Division against South Division Champion USC.”

UPDATE: Statement on 2020 #Pac12FCG ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/QKg6rheTmj

— Pac-12 Conference (@pac12) December 14, 2020

This news now leaves Colorado without an opponent this week. The Buffaloes are coming off of a 38-21 loss to Utah on Saturday, their first loss this season. The Ducks are 3-2 on the season after winning their first three games against Stanford, Washington State and UCLA. Since then, they lost their last two contests to Oregon State and California. They will go for their second straight Pac-12 title.

USC is 5-0 on the season with victories over Arizona State, Arizona, Utah, Washington State and UCLA.

The Pac-12 Championship will kickoff on Friday at 6 p.m. MST and will be televised on FOX.