BYU is in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic with Notre Dame, Florida State, and St. Johns. BYU is playing Virginia Tech at EA. BYU is going to Baylor. BYU is playing the best two teams in Utah (after BYU) in USU and Weber State. UofU dropped those two teams. As stated in the article above, UofU has not only filled it's schedule with as many lower tier teams as possible, but most of them are at the bottom of their respective level.

I'll give you that the Pac schedule has slightly better venues than the WCC schedule, but nowhere near enough to make up for the terrible non-conference schedule. Competition wise, the Pac is the same or slightly better than the WCC, but nowhere near strong enough to make up for the utter lack of quality opponents early on.