Another round of The Great Western Uniform Bracket 2011 has come and gone, and so have another 4 Pac-12 teams from contention for the tournament championship. One of them was the Stanford Cardinal. Washington, California, Colorado and Arizona State all moved on to the Divisional Finals, leaving Stanford, USC, UCLA and Oregon–the top 4 seeds–in the dust.

Washington ran away with the race for the most overall votes, accumulating thousands en route to handily taking care of Oregon. California amassed the second-most number of votes, while Colorado and Oregon came in third and fourth, respectively.

Why was Stanford upset, and how did USC manage to fall so early and so convincingly despite popular uniforms and a devoted following? The bracket has shown that teams that win do so because the schools rally behind the cause, usually inspired by a plug on a trusted school sports outlet. Some notes on those, and our thanks, follow:

• Seattle Times football reporter Bob Condotta was by far the get-out-the-vote MVP this round. His link in the Times‘s extremely thorough Husky Football Blog drove unprecedented traffic to The Daily Axe and proved not only that UW has a wired and passionate fanbase but also that Condotta’s work ranks among the most popular in the conference.
• California Golden Blogs won the Golden Bears many of their votes following a shout-out to the uniform bracket voting from the popular Berkeley blog.
• Ralphie Report and AllBuffs.com once again got Colorado a top showing in the voting, following the sites’ incredible push in the bracket’s first round.
• House of Sparky got Sun Devil fans mobilized to a win over UCLA.
• Rule of Tree, a fellow Stanford site, continues to be a wonderful partner in covering Stanford sports and linked to the Stanford-Cal voting yesterday.

That does not even approach a comprehensive summary of the efforts made by websites and fans around the conference to support their teams and our site in the second round. Thanks again to everyone who voted, commented, tweeted, Stumbled and Facebook shared the uniform bracket. All of you are eligible for our end-of-tournament prize.

Here’s a look at the third round:

The two match-ups are identical in seeding: each features the 3 and 5 seeds from the respective division. The North promises a thriller, as the top two vote recipients square off for the right to represent all points north of Palo Alto and west of Salt Lake City in the conference championship pairing. In the South, ASU looks to take down the enthusiastic and mobilized Colorado fans that have run over Arizona and USC so far.

Once again, the vacation-laden August weekend will be a reprieve from voting, which will reconvene on Monday with Colorado versus Arizona State, followed by Washington versus California on Tuesday.

Don’t forget that commenting, tweeting and Facebook commenting gets you eligible for the prize when all is final. You receive one entry per interaction, so don’t let up as the tournament heads into what should be its most heated races.

Related Posts:

• First Round Results
• And the Winner is…
• The Great Western Uniform Bracket 2011