Canzano: Pac-12 teams (and coaches) play a mean game

A story... plus my weekly picks.

Washington and Oregon played a wild game at Autzen Stadium. (Photo: Serena Morones)

Opposing Pac-12 Conference football coaches didn’t like Mario Cristobal. They grew weary with the chest-thumping recruiting celebrations and the incessant proclamations about his program’s superior toughness and physicality.

So they went “Mean Girls” on him.

The University of Oregon football program won a lot of games in four seasons with Cristobal at the helm. It claimed back-to-back conference championships and played in three straight Pac-12 title games. But there was no greater evidence of the back-biting dislike for Cristobal than the annual anonymous season-ending vote by Pac-12 coaches.

“You take a look,” Cristobal told me once, “and tell me what you see.”