The programming pom-pom wavers at CBS and ESPN don’t want to hear it. Paul Finebaum’s collection of crazies doesn’t want to hear it. The “SEC! SEC! SEC!” chanters don’t want to hear it.

But hear this: The Pac-12 should be the premier conference in college football in 2014. To quote Jim Morrison, the West is the best.

In a watershed year when access to the national title is broader than ever, Larry Scott’s league has three important things going for it:

[ Slideshow: Pac-12 football at a glance]

• The deepest pool of proven coaches it has ever had.

• The finest collection of quarterbacks in the nation. By a wide margin.

• The toughest schedules anywhere, in a year when strength of schedule (allegedly) will matter more than ever.

View photos Oregon's Marcus Mariota is a serious Heisman Trophy contender. (AP) More

The combination may not yield a national champion, but it almost certainly will yield a College Football Playoff participant – and if things break right, possibly even two. Which could cause some folks south of the Mason-Dixon Line to threaten secession once again.

“The Pac-12 is probably better than it's ever been,” said Arizona’s Rich Rodriguez, “and it's not going backwards.”

Rodriguez is one of 10 league coaches who have had at least one 10-win season in their careers – in fact, he’s had three of those. He’s also one of four league coaches to have won a BCS bowl. With the addition of Boise State mastermind Chris Petersen (seven 10-win seasons and two BCS bowl wins) and the deletion of Lane Kiffin, no conference had a bigger year-over-year sideline upgrade than the Pac-12.

This is also Year Three for Rodriguez at Arizona, Todd Graham at Arizona State, Jim Mora at UCLA and Mike Leach at Washington State. All four immediately improved their programs, and the recruiting and strategic imprints should be indelible by now. They have helped elevate the middle and lower class of the league in a substantive way.

“I think our coaching and our conference has been phenomenal, continues to be phenomenal,” said Stanford’s David Shaw. “Our coaching roster, I'd put it up against anybody.”

What the Pac-12 must prove now is that it has a championship-caliber coach. Pete Carroll was that guy at USC (despite all those vacated wins). Chip Kelly was close to being that guy at Oregon (until the NFL and NCAA Enforcement both came calling). Jim Harbaugh could have been that guy at Stanford.

USC blew its first chance at succeeding Carroll by hiring Kiffin; now it will try again with another former Carroll assistant in Steve Sarkisian. Oregon promoted from within with Mark Helfrich, who won 11 games his first season as a head coach and still had people wondering if he’s the right man for the job. Shaw has done an excellent job of maintaining Harbaugh’s momentum at Stanford, taking the Cardinal to three straight BCS bowls.

If anyone appears poised to become the straw boss of the league, it’s Mora. He’s repurposed previously soft UCLA as a tougher team, and ramped up recruiting in a hurry.

“I think you can make a case of what Jim Mora has done in the last two years at UCLA is as good as what anybody's done in the nation,” Shaw said. “As far as rebuilding a program or given a program an identity or recruiting-wise, as far as what they've done and style of play, they've become a physical, get-after-you football team. … He's built something in UCLA that was not there before.”

Story continues