This week, I would not want to be Larry Scott.

Sure, by most accounts, this week has been a pretty good one for the Pac-10 Conference’s commissioner. His conference’s football programs performed fairly well over the weekend against nonconference competition, going 6-4 overall. Only one of those defeats–California’s 52-31 loss to Nevada–was really an upset, and a spirited Arizona State team that was supposed to get blown out in Madison instead gave Wisconsin a run for its money, losing 20-19 on a blocked extra point.

Meanwhile, in the win column, Arizona took the game of the week, conquering then-No. 9 Iowa 34-27, while beleaguered UCLA managed an upset of then-No. 23 Houston and Stanford blew out Wake Forest, all on national TV.

Here’s the catch, though: while these games were nationally televised, due to the time difference between the East and West Coasts, they all started at or after 10:30 p.m. in East Coast markets, when most fans have already had their fill of football for the day. Many of the voters in the Associated Press poll and other polls probably didn’t watch any of the Pac-10’s big games, since the polls are centered on the East Coast.

All it takes is one glance at the latest rankings to see the prevalence of East Coast bias, and the persistent undervaluing of the Pac-10. It’s already well-known that the USA Today Coaches’ Poll undervalues the Pac-10 even more so than its main counterpart, the Associated Press Top 25 poll (yet the former is counted in the BCS formula while the latter is not). So, let’s throw out the Coaches’ Poll and focus on the AP.

To start with, let’s look at where Arizona landed after decisively taking down Iowa. The Wildcats jumped from No. 24 to No. 14 in the polls, but I would argue that, based on the teams above them, they are ranked too low, primarily because of the prevalence of East Coast bias.

The four teams ranked immediately above Arizona are No. 13 Utah, No. 12 South Carolina, No. 11 Wisconsin and No. 10 Arkansas. Utah deserves its ranking: it opened the season by defeating Pittsburgh, a perennial Big East contender, and has steamrolled its last two opponents. However, South Carolina, Arkansas and (especially) Wisconsin should not be ranked as highly as they are. They simply receive greater consideration because (a) AP voters actually watched their games; and (b) they don’t play in the Pac-10, which is inexplicably considered inferior to the Big Ten.

Let’s start with the SEC teams, South Carolina and Arkansas. Both programs’ biggest wins of the season to date are over a Georgia team that was clearly overrated to start the season and is currently unranked. But both teams “looked good” in their games against the Bulldogs, a consideration the Pac-10 can never receive because no one is actually watching to see how good the teams look.

Wisconsin’s ranking at No. 11 is even more egregious. To date, the Badgers have beaten storied programs like UNLV and San Jose State, and barely escaped against an Arizona State team picked to finish ninth in the Pac-10 preseason media poll. Yet somehow, the mere fact that it plays in the Big Ten and appears to have some potential is enough to rank it higher than an Arizona team that defeated one of the main contenders for the Big Ten conference title.

So we come back to the Pac-10 commish, Larry Scott. He has done an admirable job in his first year, expanding the conference by two schools and trying to heighten its national profile. However, he has done this without explicitly addressing the elephant in the room: the fact that the media inexplicably favors East Coast teams over West Coast ones, and that a three-hour time difference is regularly given as an acceptable justification for this discrepancy. Hell, it’s even a reason why Toby Gerhart didn’t win the Heisman Trophy last year: the East Coast has greater weight in voting than the West Coast, and those voters never watched Gerhart bulldoze opposing defenses and singlehandedly carry Stanford through its brutal conference schedule.

Scott needs to make a direct attack on East Coast bias, and I believe the best way to do this is to call for a reformulation of the polls’ methodology to reflect more voices from the West Coast that actually watch the Pac-10’s games. Today, only six voters in the AP poll are from Pac-10 territory–three from California and one each from Washington, Oregon and Arizona–compared to 14 from states with SEC schools and 14 more from states with Big Ten schools.

Indeed, despite the fact that California has a high number of quality programs and is the country’s most populous state, it has the same number of voters as Ohio (which has one major football program in Ohio State) and one less than Texas. The four “national” voters–two from ESPN/ABC, one from Sports Illustrated and one from the St. Petersburg Times in Florida–tend to be East Coast-based as well. Similar adjustments should be made to the voting process for the Heisman Trophy.

If these changes are made, the Pac-10 schools will have a much better chance at gaining national respect, as well as the prestige (and lucrative media contracts) that come with it. Scott has a duty to make these recommendations, as a critical part of his continued mission to raise the profile of his conference.

Kabir Sawhney is actually from New Jersey. Remind him that he didn’t know anything about Pac-10 football before last year at [email protected].