The top 10 in the Pac-10

USC is back on top of my Pac-10 Conference football rankings after beating last week's leader Oregon on Saturday. They're based foremost on how many wins each team has above or below the number an average major-college team would have if it faced the same schedule. A "half" game plus or minus is the result of winning or losing a game that looked like a tossup going in. Essentially I divide college teams into three groups: top-25 teams; teams with sub-.500 records, and everyone in between. A school should win home games against sub-.500 teams and middling teams, and lose road games against top-25 teams and middling teams; home games top-25s and road games against sub-.500s are toss-ups. It's not the most scientific method in the world, but a fair way to estimate how satisfied or dissatisfied fans should be with their team's results so far. Ties (and there are a lot this week) are broken by looking at raw won-lost records and performance against the spread and over-and-under line.

1. USC (+1; 1-1 in conference games, 3-1 overall)
2. Cal (+0.5; 2-0, 4-1)
3. Arizona (+0.5; 2-0, 4-1)
4. Oregon (+0.5; 2-1, 4-2)
5. Stanford (+0.5; 2-1, 3-3)
6. Oregon State (+0; 1-1, 2-3)
7. UCLA (-1; 1-1, 2-3)
8. Arizona State (-1.5; 1-1, 2-3)
9. Washington (-2; 0-3, 1-5)
10. Washington State (-3; 0-3, 0-5)