The schedule is a joke.
The crappy thing about playing junkie teams is that you also have no clue what kind of team you have and what your weaknesses are going into conference play. It's nice to get exposed early in the season so you can spend the rest of the season practicing on adjustments.
There is no good excuse for not playing quality teams on the road---in fact I would say it's riskier to schedule a bunch of UVU type teams at home than playing Kansas on the road. We saw last year byu get smoked by a couple bad teams. There is no upside to winning against crap teams from a selection standpoint. Losing to kansas on the road by 4 points would do more for our team than beating Texas southern by 15.