I wonder if teams will move away from scheduling OOC games so far out in the future.
Let's say the SEC someday does the right thing and goes to a 3+6 rotation. Our 3 would of course be OU, A&M, and Arkansas. What if our two rotating sets of 6 are
Alabama, Florida, Mississippi State, Missouri, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
and
Auburn, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Ole Miss, South Carolina
this is actually done evenly based on all-time SEC records. Obviously wouldn't work out that well but let's go with it. Now imagine a decade from now if one of those two sets is MUCH stronger than the other set. Programs ebb and flow and it's certainly possible. Let's say that Florida pulls its head out and Alabama stays great under Deboer and Heupel puts it all together and so the top set has three top 10 teams in it. And at the same time Kiffin is fired for banging the school president's daughter, LSU continues being poor and goes downhill, and Smart is banned for life for assaulting opposing players on the sideline so the second set is pure garbage with one team in the top 25.
So as you're setting up your 3 out of conference games for those seasons wouldn't it make a lot of sense to configure your two "premier P4 OOC opponents" to be Oregon while you're playing the bottom set and Nebraska while you're playing the top set? Otherwise you're just completely leaving schedule strength talk outside of your control.
Although after having typed that you could do everything right then Jim Harbaugh leaves and goes to the NFL.