Time for Pac-9 to make a stand

Ready. . . set. . .

Hold it, are we sure they’re ready?

In 1999, the No. 4 Arizona Wildcats opened what was supposed to a banner Pacific 10 Conference season with a 41-7 loss at Penn State.

Three openers ago, Oregon State traveled to treacherous Baton Rouge, La., and played the Louisiana State Tigers off their paws and had the game won until they didn’t, losing, 21-20, in overtime.

Last year’s opening weekend featured California getting stage fright at Tennessee and poisoning the Pac-10’s national reputation even though Cal ended up winning 10 games and its first share of a conference title since 1975.

“We were in the 12th game of the season and people were still asking, ‘What happened that first game?’ ” Cal quarterback Nate Longshore said this summer. “It was like, ‘Didn’t I answer this question last week?’ It stuck with us all year and sticks with us now.”

Oregon State kicks off the Pac-10 season tonight with a crucial -- aren’t they all? -- nonconference matchup against Utah in Corvallis, Ore.

Oregon State also won 10 games last year, defeated eventual Rose Bowl champion USC, and rallied furiously to eclipse Missouri in the Sun Bowl.

Yet, as they sometimes say in the Pac-10, “If the Stanford Tree fell in the forest, would anybody hear it?”

The road to perception-busting starts now.

“Besides the fact our own teams want to win games and that’s the focus, there are periphery ramifications of these early preseason games,” Oregon State Coach Mike Riley conceded this week. “People always seem to refer back to them.”

What about USC?

Forget USC. People who bag on the Pac-10 consider the Trojans to be in a league of their own.

It’s as if USC, for tax purposes, just keeps a P.O. box in Walnut Creek.

Tom Hansen, the conference’s commissioner, says this is unfair.

“It truly does bother you,” he said last month in response to Louisiana State Coach Les Miles’ saying USC had a relative cakewalk to the national title game.

Is the Pac-10 being unfairly judged?

It’s a mixed bag.

The conference has sent seven schools to major bowls since the Bowl Championship Series was formed in 1998, and USC was the last school in following UCLA, Stanford, Washington, Oregon State, Oregon and Washington State.

The Pac-10 is 7-4 overall in BCS games.

The Atlantic Coast Conference is 1-8.

Why isn’t Miles directing his criticisms toward possibly having to play a BCS game against a champion from the easy-road ACC?

For one, that ACC team might be Virginia Tech, and the Hokies are headed to Baton Rouge for an important nonconference matchup Sept. 8.

The Pac-9 (excluding USC) has also had its share of blown saves.

There are many important games this year on the conference’s round-robin, but just as big are games outside the league.

Football folks expect USC to take care of business against Idaho, Nebraska and Notre Dame. It’s up to “and the rest” on Gilligan’s Island to flag down a rescue ship.

“It’s a reality that’s there,” Riley said.

The Pac-9 needs to get busy tonight, starting in Corvallis, and then Friday, when much-improved-we-think Washington plays at Syracuse.

It would be a bonus if the Pac-9 had a head of Anchor Steam on Saturday evening when Cal plays host to Tennessee in a critical pay-back chance.

What do people remember about last year?

“The bowl game a little bit,” Cal Coach Jeff Tedford said, “but it seems they always come back to Tennessee.”

Other early showcase games include Washington State at Wisconsin (the Cougars will be asked only to keep it close), Arizona at Brigham Young, and Houston at Oregon.

San Jose State plays at Arizona State in a matchup of coaching friends Dick Tomey and Dennis Erickson. Tomey, when he coached at Arizona, was 8-5-1 against Arizona State.

Next week, Oregon plays at, yikes, Michigan, and later this year UCLA gets a must-avenge match against Notre Dame at the Rose Bowl.

The Pac-10 doesn’t need to win all of these games, but it needs to win some.

Perception is reality in college football, and it can hit you in your pocketbook.

The Pac-10 hasn’t put a second team in a BCS game since 2002, when USC played Iowa in the Orange Bowl and Washington State played Oklahoma in the Rose.

In a system without a playoff, what people think of you can mean everything. At-large bowl bids are determined in part by the BCS standings, which include subjective polls.

In 2004, Texas edged Cal out of a Rose Bowl berth because a few voters switched sides after a Cal victory at Southern Mississippi.

If the Pac-9 doesn’t take care of business in late August, it could happen again come December.

Remember, it’s an interesting football-watching world out there, and not everyone east of Denver stays up late or gets FSN West as part of their cable package.

Blitz package

* Story lines for opening weekend are vast and varied:

Four top-25 teams play tonight, with No. 2 Louisiana State opening the Southeastern Conference sched ule at Mississippi State. Also, No. 10 Louisville plays host to Murray State, No. 16 Rutgers gets a greet-and-beat against Buffalo, and No. 24 Boise State goes from beating Oklahoma to hosting Weber State.

In Blacksburg, Va., a tragic and tumultuous off-season at Virginia Tech serves as backdrop when the No. 9 Hokies play host to East Carolina.

In South Bend, third-year Notre Dame Coach Charlie Weis knows who will start at quarterback at Georgia Tech but isn’t telling us or Georgia Tech. “I’m not really in the business of passing out, giving out free information on that one,” Weis said. The guess is that Evan Sharpley, not freshman Jimmy Clausen, will get the call.

For what it’s worth, Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, Dan Devine and Lou Holtz won national titles in their third seasons at Notre Dame.

In State College, Pa., Joe Paterno begins his 42nd year as head coach at Penn State when the Nittany Lions play host to Florida International.

The 80-year Paterno has now coached longer at one school than anyone, surpassing the 41 seasons Amos Alonzo Stagg spent at the University of Chicago.

* Debuts:

Nick Saban makes his at Alabama at home against Western Carolina; Randy Shannon opens a new era at Miami as the Hurricanes play host to Marshall; Steve Kragthorpe inherits a top-10 team at Louisville; and Dennis Erickson begins his third tour of Pac-10 duty as he takes over at Arizona State.

Sam Keller, who sat out last year after transferring from Arizona State, makes his debut as Nebraska quarterback when the Cornhuskers play host to Nevada.

* Debut deferred: Former UCLA coach Bob Toledo’s first game as Tulane coach will be Sept. 8 when the Green Wave is at home against Mississippi State.

* Best game of the first weekend? How about Oklahoma State at Georgia?

* Upset potential: San Jose State at Arizona State.

* Housekeeping, please: Many are keeping a close watch on how the Sugar Bowl handles double-host duties this year in post-Katrina New Orleans. The Sugar Bowl committee recently announced that both games were sold out.

The Sugar Bowl will host its traditional game on Tuesday, Jan. 1, and then, six days later, the BCS title game on Jan. 7.

The 2006 Sugar Bowl had to be moved to Atlanta in the aftermath of Katrina but returned to the Louisiana Superdome in 2007 as a crowd of 77,781 watched Louisiana State defeat Notre Dame.

Last year the Fiesta Bowl had first crack at the “double-host” format. The Orange Bowl is up next in the rotation with the Rose Bowl completing the cycle by playing host to two games in 2009.

* The Harris Interactive College Football Poll, which replaced the Associated Press poll in the BCS standings formula, returns for its third season with 114 confirmed panelists. The first Harris poll will be released Sept. 23; the BCS standings debut Oct. 14.

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com