The merits of recruiting rankings are debated in every sports bar and around every water cooler in the nation. Athlon continues its look at how each All-Conference team ranked as high school recruits with the first-team All-Pac-12 team.

Related: College Football's 2012 All-American Team as Recruits

2012 Offensive All-Pac-12 Team as Recruits

Single-game, single-season and career records. School, conference and national benchmarks. Remarkable performances and embarrassing moments. The good, bad and ugly makes college football the great sport that it is today. Here are the 20 most intriguing, most important and most interesting college football stats of the 2012 season: 

At the end of college football’s regular season, the focus always shifts to the BCS title and debating the best teams in the nation. However, there’s also the other side of the coin, as the end of the year is a chance to reflect on the worst teams. And when examining the BCS era (1998-2012), there's no shortage of "quality" candidates for this ranking. 

Please raise your hand if you had UCLA at Stanford in the 2012 Pac-12 championship game? I am still waiting. Oregon and USC were overwhelming favorites to win their respective divisions out west this fall and neither was able to reach the promised land. Oregon is still the highest-rated team in the league and should land in a BCS bowl game, while USC took a very different route to disappointment this fall. That said, a host of new coaches and freshmen quarterbacks have this league poised for a run at the mighty SEC over the next few seasons.

This could be one of the truly great season finales in Pac-12 history. And this comes from a league that consistently plays its best rivalries on the final weekend of the year. The Civil War. The Apple Cup. The Duel in the Desert. Notre Dame and USC. And, oh by the way, Stanford visits UCLA with a trip to the Pac-12 championship game on the line.

Additionally, it's worth nothing that Colorado will play Utah.

Pac-12's Top Storylines to Watch in Week 13:

A chance to coach college football at the top level of the game for a living should make any man on the sideline to be thankful.

Some should be more thankful than others this year, though, to be coaching major college football this season.

So much for a Oregon-USC rematch in the Pac-12 title game. UCLA not only knocked Matt Barkley out of the game, the Bruins knocked the Trojans out of the title race for good. UCLA has clinched its second straight bid to the conference championship game — and they may have to face the same team in six days. Should Stanford win in the Rose Bowl this weekend, these two teams will meet again in Palo Alto for the right to play in the Rose Bowl against the Big Ten champ.

The Oregon-USC rematch Pac-12 championship game has felt like a foregone conclusion for much of the 2012 calendar year. However, it's very possible both teams could lose this weekend — and that would essentially put Stanford and UCLA into the championship game. What a twist that would be in Week 12, right? Those are two of the best games of the year in the Pac-12 and are two of the marquee showdowns nationally this weekend. Sit back and enjoy.

Pac-12's Top Storylines to Watch in Week 12:

What a last few weeks it should be out West. UCLA and USC will square off this weekend with a trip to the Pac-12 championship game on the line. Oregon now has to face possibly its toughest two opponents of the season with Stanford and Oregon State to finish the year. Jeff Tedford is hanging by a thread in Berkeley. And all chaos is breaking out in Pullman.

The race in the Pac-12 South continues to entertain. Arizona's loss to UCLA was costly, both in the standings and on the injury report. USC's loss to Oregon didn't end their title hopes as the two L.A. schools are now headed on a collision course for Nov. 17. But both need to take care of business this weekend against overmatched opponents to ensure next weekend's game sends the winner to Eugene in December. Otherwise, all eyes should be pointed northward to Palo Alto, where the Beavers come to town, and Seattle, where Utah is fighting for a bowl game.