CORVALLIS -- The scout for the New York Giants left at halftime. The guy working for the Eagles followed him to the press-box elevator and took off, too. And a pair of Buffalo Bills’ scouts bailed in such a hurry that their Dutch Bros. coffee cups were still warm, half-filled, sitting on the table top of their assigned seats when the second half kicked off.

Utah beat Oregon State 52-7 on Saturday.

Nothing half-warm about that.

Nine NFL scouts watched two quarters, saw the oncoming intermission, and then acted like someone in the press box had pulled the fire alarm. They exited the building. Good thing, too. This Utah football team plays like one of those runaway logging trucks. It was evident from the start on Saturday that Oregon State isn’t ready for the kind of speeding, wide, heavy, long challenge that it presented.

But I am dying to know if Oregon is.

Now I probably could quote Ducks’ coach Mario Cristobal on the matter right about here. And he’d probably say something like, “ALL FOCUS ON WASHINGTON!” And he’d be right, his gaze should be on next week’s Pac-12 opponent. That’s what good coaches do. They compartmentalize, week to week. They don’t look into the distance and wonder.

But sports columnists and fans do it all the time. And I challenge anyone who saw Utah plow up and down the field on Saturday night in Benton County to tell me they didn’t wonder if the two best teams in the Pac-12 were having a cosmic near miss.

Utah was piling it on OSU in Corvallis. And 48 miles away in Eugene, Cristobal’s team, fresh off a Friday-night 45-3 drubbing of Colorado, was in the football operations building, busy preparing for UW. It was like two massive college football meteors passing within a brush of each other over the weekend, getting the scientists all worked up, then hurtling off into space without incident.

Next possible collision: Dec. 6 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.

That’s the date and setting for the Pac-12 title game. Since the Utes and Ducks skip each other in round-robin play this season, they won’t meet until then, if at all. And man, I’m thinking after seeing them both snap into form this weekend that we might be talking about an “until then” situation.

Utah’s size is absurd. And it has some excellent playmakers at the skill positions. Oregon’s defense is a wrecking ball and the Ducks have the best quarterback in the conference. But which of the two is better? Who would win?

No shame for Oregon State in losing badly to Utah. It found itself in a race that it isn’t yet equipped to win. Like you or I taking a wrong turn leaving the fairgrounds and accidentally driving the family vehicle onto a drag strip where we find an 11,000-horsepower Top Fuel dragster idling beside us.

Light goes green.

Tires scream and squeal.

Then, it’s split ear drums and a mess of rubber fragments and gravel flying in our face. Also, the scent of burning rubber. And when it clears we’re still idling at the start line, watching Kyle Whittingham wave from his driver’s seat a quarter-mile away.

Utah is seasoned, coming off a bye week, and playing angry and focused. They’re also incredibly tall, heavy and long limbed. It’s a physical test at every position. And Utes’ coach, Whittingham, told me this week that his team has done a lot of thinking and talking about how close they came a year ago to winning the conference title.

Utah lost to Washington in the 2018 Pac-12 title game, 10-3.

“I think that’s a big part of the reason four or five of them came back for another season,” he said.

The three measly points managed on offense is also probably why Whittingham heavily invested in his next offensive coordinator. Former Utah play caller Troy Taylor (who made $525,000 last season at Utah) left the program to be the head coach at Sacramento State. Whittingham opened the vault. He hired Andy Ludwig to call the plays and paid him $820,000 this season, fourth highest among the Pac-12′s assistants.

It looks like a great hire.

Utah has only one loss this season -- by seven at USC on a Friday night. It will be difficult to beat down the stretch. If the Utes play like they did at Reser Stadium, nobody including Washington will touch them until the Pac-12 title game.

Oregon still has games at Washington, USC and Arizona State. There’s a lot left to prove. But they look like the only team in the North physically capable of playing with Utah, should it win the South.

Oregon State played out the end of the game on Saturday, finally scoring a harmless touchdown with 56 seconds left. It now faces back to back road games at Cal and Arizona sandwiched around a bye week. Those will be more competitive and revealing. We hope. Probably. But it’s clear Beavers are nowhere near ready for a challenge like Utah.

“Their front seven is probably the best in the league..." OSU quarterback Jake Luton said. “They don’t have a weakness.”

But would the Ducks get pushed around like that?

I couldn’t help but wonder.