When those games were scheduled those teams weren’t bad. MSU, MSU both were good teams. Michigan State went to the CFP 9 months before BYU played them.

Ideally you’ll schedule a bunch of big name teams who are over-hyped and ranked early but tank later in the year a la Pitt-1984. But you can’t predict that. Not even with some degree of certainty as Michigan State and Toledo 2016 demonstrated. Toledo was fantastic that year but that game had no cache. The opponent, although excellent that year, had no name power to it. So beating them gave BYU nothing.

College football is about name power. BYU has it but when playing against teams that don’t, it doesn’t move the respect meter.

So looking back and seeing who is good and bad tells us something about how things turned out but almost impossible to tell us how to plan a schedule 9 years from now. Let alone 3 years from now.