Could they end up having a great year? Yes. But they were absolutely embarrassed by Stanford and fired their coach. Oregon has the most impressive non-conference win in the country. We will have to see how the season plays out but as of right now, our schedule is not good enough.

It has nothing to do with not being in the club. The risk of an independent schedule is that you could play multiple top teams from different conferences or all bottom-dwellers.

There is still a lot of time for our schedule to look better, ASU, USC, Baylor, and Virginia could all be really good but at this point in the season the strength of schedule isn't there.

Arizona just lost to an FCS team and Wazzu looks terrible. USC, Utah, and ASU are all unknowns at this point. Just beating a team with a P5 label doesn't matter when your resume is being compared to other P5 teams that have done the same thing. The quality of the opponents matter and many of the teams we have scheduled look to be mediocre to bad.