As conferences across the country figure out what they are and where they stand five years into the College Football Playoff era, the Pac-12 is having an identity crisis on the national stage.



The conference spent much of the last year dealing with self-inflicted PR wounds, and football didn’t do much to ease the pain.



The Pac-12 was left out of the College Football Playoff again and the conference’s champion, Washington, lost in the Pac-12’s only New Year’s Six bowl appearance. Worse yet, those results were on brand for a league that has failed to make the Playoff in three of the format’s five years and has only won two non-Playoff New Year’s Six games — one fewer than Group of 5 teams — over the same span.



In early February, as college football programs across the country closed out their 2019 signing classes, the Pac-12 secured one top-15 class, according to 247Sports, which was not only tied for the fewest...