Lots of us throw the "P5 schedule" term around a lot when talking about this year's or next year's schedule. Four, five or even six games against teams in power 5 conferences is a real accomplishment but still doesn't get us anywhere near the nine or ten that most of these conferences are playing now or will shortly be demanding from their members.

My question is this. Is it even possible for an independent to get this many P5 teams to play us? Take the PAC-12 for example. Once conference play begins they don't want their teams scheduling OOC games. The few exceptions are usually generated because there is an odd team out when Stanford or USC plays Notre Dame. The Big Ten is soon going to a 9 game conference schedule and likely will discourage OOC games during conference play too.

In other words, the only teams available to play after conference play begins in the future will likely be the exceptions to the rules and it's hard to see there being enough of them to get us to a true P5 schedule which we know the CFP Committee wants to see. Even Notre Dame has had to negotiate a 5 game ACC deal to keep its schedule tough enough and ESPN's Championship Drive was doubting their strength of schedule on their show after ND's loss. It seems like an impossible task.