Ignore the names and look at their actual recent results:

California--PAC team. Beat Or State, Colorado, Wash St, and Mississippi last year
McNeese State--Won 9 games last year
Utah State--They've beat us 2 of the last 4 meetings
Hawaii--Okay, tough to come up with positives for this one. At least they beat UMass last year.
Northern Illinois--Best team in the MAC over the last decade. Won 8 games last year and entire defense is returning.
New Mexico State--Went to a bowl game where they beat Utah State. Have their entire defense returning.

Summary. It's really not a bad schedule if you ignore the team names and look deeper into who they actually are. Yeah, None of these teams are huge names or world-beaters, but even the worst of these teams on our home schedule beat teams last year that we lost to. Other than Hawaii, they're all solid teams coming off solid seasons with lots of returning starters, and could give us problems. (And who knows, maybe even Hawaii could give us problems)