Devils Still Undefeated; Number 8 in first BCS ranking

The Devils took care of business Saturday night against Washington and have now officially beat all the teams they were supposed to beat. After their upcoming bye week, the soft part of their schedule officially ends.

The match-up with Cal on Oct. 27 was supposed to be a premiere match-up of undefeated teams but unfortunately Cal did not deliver on their part of the bargain. Sure their starting QB was hurt but legit top 5 teams are supposed to overcome those type of things against weaker competition, particularly on their home field. Way to screw up an opportunity to be number 1 Cal and hand the top spot to an overrated and undeserving Ohio State. People want to say ASU is overrated because we haven't beaten anyone yet, but Ohio State has beaten an even more unimpressive schedule of nobodies.

I'm trying to be realistic about ASU. Here's my realistic prediction -- 3-2 over the next five games with wins against Cal, UCLA and U of A with losses to Oregon and USC. 10-2 record results in trip to Holiday Bowl.

Finally time to win in California?

The last time the Arizona State football team won a Pac-10 game in California;

• Google was just another search engine
• Bill Clinton was president
• Baseball fans still enjoyed watching Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire play and we all thought they were just naturally strong guys
• The Bone Collector was the Number 1 movie in America
• RIM had just introduced the BlackBerry to the market
• There were no iPods
• Napster was all the rage
• I had no kids

November 6, 1999 was the last time Sun Devil football won a conference game in the state of California. That was a 26-16 win over USC, well before they were the USC we all despise today. Future NFLers shined in that game with Todd Heap scoring a TD and more than 100 yards receiving and JR Redmond racked up more that 150 all-purpose yards.

The last time they won at all in California was 2002 when they escaped San Diego State with a 39-28 win. Thanks Koetter for preparing the boys to show up in California. In case anyone is interested, Koetter was 1-12 in California during his time at ASU.

Clearly Saturday's game against Stanford is a big one beyond the obvious reasons of staying undefeated, beating a team they should beat and continuing to climb the rankings. Getting a conference win in California will truly represent the changing of the guard for the program and will go a long way in demonstrating to the locals who need to fill the stadium that ASU is for real.

On paper Stanford doesn't look great, but this is a team that gave Oregon all they could handle last weekend and they have a fiery up and coming coach in Jim Harbaugh. Should be a good one and the first close game from start to finish ASU has played in thus far in 2007.