A final look at the 2014 Pac-12 South football standings reveals something close to a logjam -- only one loss separates first and fourth place, and only two defeats stand between the division title and fifth place. Early prognostications of the 2015 season suggest that even more parity is possible. The situation in the South seems even more muddled, and this just might be the year that the North -- which has been in an Oregon-Stanford stranglehold for the entirety of this decade -- finally sees some more competitive balance outside of those two programs.

This is one truth of parity: Differences in each team's schedule could be pivotal in ultimately determining the conference race. Whereas a game (or even two) might have been inconsequential toward the trophy in years when one team ran away with the race, it's clear that individual scheduling nuances matter now... a lot.

So, when Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News ranked the all the Pac-12 teams' schedules based on difficulty, we clicked. Wilner writes that Washington and USC face the toughest roads in the conference, while UCLA, Oregon State, and Washington State will traverse the easiest paths. Of course, that perception might change as opponents prove stronger and weaker than their initial projections over the course of the season, but Wilner's rankings give a good ballpark estimation for what to expect as far as difficulty goes.

Arizona State's schedule features some potential benefits: As Wilner points out, the Sun Devils miss Stanford entirely while getting USC and Oregon at home. Meanwhile, the Cardinal stand to enjoy similar benefits: They miss Arizona State and Utah (two teams that gave them fits last season), while playing most of their supposedly toughest games at home.

Those are just two nuances that Wilner points out. Be sure to analyze his entire breakdown, as the key to projecting a winner in this wild conference could lie in one of its details.