with something to prove. If the purpose is to schedule easy wins in non conference games, why give yourself less credit with what could be a harder game over say Boise or a tough SDSU when you can just run Stanford, Cal, Arizona or UCLA out of the stadium? Those programs are not gonna recover any time soon.
Also, we wont be playing in California or Arizona automatically. Both would be good locations for road games for recruiting purposes. Though not necessary.
9 game conference schedule should be
1 FCS in week 1
1 weak P5 in week 2
Utah in the last week