The ABC broadcast crew of Steve Levy, Brian Griese and Todd McShay spent 3 days up at Washington in preparation for Saturday’s Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game. Levy said that he got a chance to ask Huskies coach Chris Petersen a question that was on the minds of many people.

“How do you feel about having the weight of the Pac-12’s Playoff chances on your shoulders?”

According to Levy, Petersen hated the question.

Well, whether Petersen likes it or not, his team’s loss on Saturday to Auburn in Atlanta had big-time College Football Playoff implications for his squad and the entire Pac-12. That’s not just because of some ESPN FPI metric that said Washington’s Playoff chances were cut in half with a loss on Saturday.

That’s because of basic history, and the likelihood of it repeating itself.

Let me explain.

If Washington is going to make the Playoff, it’ll be doing something unprecedented. We’ve still yet to see a team who plays a 9-game conference schedule run the table in conference play and make the Playoff. We’ve also still yet to see a team with 2 losses make the field.

See what I’m getting at?

Credit: Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

There’s a reason that ESPN ranked Saturday’s showdown as the No. 3 most important game in the entire 2018 season for the Playoff picture. Obviously after Week 1, it’s far too early to see if that’ll come true.

But man, you could hear the collective Pac-12 groans across the internet when Jake Browning took that final sack.

Washington was clearly the most overwhelming preseason choice to make the Playoff. In fact, I’m not even sure if I came across a single non-Washington Playoff participant from the Pac-12.

Will the selection committee care that, pound for pound, the Huskies looked every bit as good as Auburn in what was basically a road game? No. What it will care about was an all-important head-to-head matchup that wound up being a huge feather in the SEC’s cap.

It’s going to be awfully difficult to make the conference supremacy argument in favor of the Pac-12 over the SEC, unless there’s an overwhelming disparity of top-25 teams. Could that happen? Sure. But you know what would’ve made that a much better argument? Washington traveling to the heart of the SEC country and pulling out a win.

It takes awhile for a conference to shake a Playoff-less season in which it goes 1-8 in bowls. Washington had a chance to expedite that process.

Now even if Washington proves to be the class of the Pac-12, the selection committee will be left wondering how good the conference really is because of the Huskies’ loss to Auburn. And if Auburn is in contention for a Playoff spot along with Washington, that advantage speaks for itself.

I’m not going to sit here and declare the Pac-12 dead on the first Saturday of the season. For all I know, USC will beat Texas, win the Pac-12 and earn its first Playoff berth. Maybe Bryce Love puts Stanford on his back and leads the march to a Playoff berth. Crazier things have happened. Shoot, Washington was barely a preseason top-15 team when it earned a Playoff berth in 2016.

But Saturday was definitely important for “the conference of champions.” It’ll have a ripple effect that extends to each team in their respective conferences, especially in the likelihood that Auburn moves into the top 5-6 after Saturday’s showing.

Petersen has every right to hate that. He can argue that Saturday’s hotly-contested battle in Atlanta should’ve helped Washington’s brand in squashing the notion that it doesn’t have the athletes to hang with SEC talent. I’d love to revisit Levy’s question to Petersen 3 months from now.

Though something tells me we’ll revisit it far sooner than that.