One of the first miniseries we took on here on the Daily McPlay was the Mythical National Championship analysis, starting with the 1936 season. We did a broad assessment of what we learned with the process awhile ago, and today, on the cusp of the final Pacific-12 Conference football game (ever), as we know it, we specifically look at the MNCs we awarded to the Conference of (real NCAA) Champions in this faux sport.

We will review in order, the years we chose a Pac-12 school as our mythical champ (asterisk denotes this team was not the Associated Press pick for No. 1):

1937—California*
1962—USC
1967—USC
1969—USC*
1972—USC
1974—USC*
1976—USC*
1978—USC*
1979—USC*
1990—Colorado (member of Big 8 at the time)
1991—Washington*
2003—USC
2004—USC
2007—USC*
2010—Oregon*
2012—Stanford*

Now, all those picks have rational thinking and mathematic analysis behind them as explained, and the USC Trojans have dominated the sport nationwide in many ways. Still, when 6 schools in a 12-team conference have been chosen via sabermetrics and logic for national championships in the history of a sport, it is significant. There’s a lot of league history and tradition right there in that list. And it can never be erased.

Either way, that is 16 MNCs in an 87-year period for Pac-12 teams. That’s only 18 percent of the championships, but it is certainly a large enough piece of the pie to stave off eradication, one would think. The winner of tonight’s final Pac-12 Championship Game certainly will have an outside shot at adding to this list, but that would be too much egg in the face of the College Football Playoff to allow, really.

It would be a great ending to what has been an amazing story, though, wouldn’t it? We think so.