I heard on the radio yesterday that UT isn't going to schedule a bunch of tough non-conference games anymore. I feel sorry for teams like North Texas State and some of the other small schools that get scheduled against these power houses. The schools make a lot of money, but the players need to play against schools they match up against.
As long as you play some top 20 teams that are a part of your conference then you can get away with a chump program. However, if you conference doesn't have solid teams then you get hosed in the BCS rankings and the coaches and writers will also look badly upon you.
No excuse for playing Div 1AA or Div 2 schools
Actually that is not quite true. You can see the future schedules up till 2011 on the UT website and they have UCLA, Arkansas, and TCU scheduled which are from respecatable conferences and have possiblites for being Top 25 material. Granted they have Rice, UTEP and Central Florida there too, but oh well.