Oregon State 3, Pitt 0.

That makes the formerly feeble Pac-10 a perfect 4-0 in bowl games this year. Including three victories over ranked teams. And three came over teams from three BCS conferences.

Only USC is still out there, and the Trojans are favored to defeat Penn State in the Rose Bowl in about 16 hours, which they should do without much trouble, if they can score a couple of touchdowns.

To recap:

–Arizona 31, No. 16 BYU 21, in the Las Vegas Bowl.  The same BYU that beat Washington and annihilated UCLA, 59-0. And the same Arizona that earlier had lost to New Mexico (!) of the Mountain West Conference. This was the only Pac-10 victory over a non-BCS school, but it was a nice one, considering the Mountain West regularly had embarrassed the Pac-10 during the regular season.

–Cal 24, Miami 17, in the Emerald Bowl. So, Cal ends on a positive note, at 9-4, beating a school that still has a reputation. The Bears were maddeningly inconsistent all season, losing every time they appeared about to get back on the national stage. This should get them into the top 25, barely.

–Oregon 42, No. 13 Oklahoma State 31, in the Holiday Bowl.  This is when I actually thought, “Hey, the Pac-10 is coming back to life.” Oregon trailed 17-7 after a quarter, but had a big second half over a team that beat Missouri, lost at Texas by only 28-24 and was ranked in the top 10 for several weeks. And, in an unexpected bonus, I actually saw some of this game on ESPN’s local (Asia) station, in the middle of the night. (Who knew?) Ducks QB Jeremiah Masoli is only a sophomore, and could pose problems for the conference for two more years.

–Oregon State 3, No. 20 Pitt 0. It had to be horrible to watch, unless you like defense, and hardly anyone who isn’t a defensive coordinator does, but this has to be the biggest 3-0 OSU victory since 1967 — when the Beavers beat USC 3-0 in the mud at Corvallis.

So, the Pac-10’s Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5 finishers all have won a bowl game. Over teams from the Big East (Pitt), the Big 12 (Oklahoma State), the ACC (Miami) and the Mountain West (BYU). Not bad.

USC winning a BCS bowl game … that would be the cherry on top of the Pac-10 bowl sundae. And if we could say, with accuracy, that the conference was awful, back in September and October, at least it will have finished strongly.

And this is important, the conference may well be perceived as strong enough, next fall, that if its champ goes 11-1 (as USC did this year) it might have a real chance of getting to the national title game. Unlike the Trojans this year, doomed by what was a horrible conference.

Until the past week, that is.