



Even as news broke Tuesday of Ohio State locking in a couple of intriguing future games – a home-and-home deal with TCU starting in 2018 – Buckeyes athletic director Gene Smith was looking for more.



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Fans, thrilled at the prospect of a new quality opponent and a chance for Urban Meyer to reach into Texas recruiting grounds, were buzzing. Ohio State already had Cincinnati of the Big East locked in for 2018. Now here was a Big 12 team, too. In the past, Ohio State may have added two local Mid-American Conference schools and called it a day.

Not anymore.

"We will play two more BCS games that year," Smith told Yahoo! Sports via email Wednesday, using the parlance for a quality top six-conference opponent.

So a non-conference schedule with no MAC schools, no Sun Belt teams, no games against teams from the old I-AA ranks – all of which are often dull mismatches? In the past few years, major powers have played three and even four of them per season.

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Ohio State, while in general always one of the more aggressive schedulers, now may take it to the ultimate level and skip the cupcakes altogether – anytime, anywhere for Meyer's program. And it's not just about the opponent's conference. It's are they a likely high-quality team from a strong conference?

"That year [2018] is a snapshot of future years," Smith said. "As we move forward, from 2018 and out, our goal is BCS only. We are looking at top ranked teams, 1-50 teams."

Welcome to the best trend in college football, the return of bold, exciting non-conference play.

After a decade and a half of plumping up schedules against historically weak teams, athletic directors at many major programs are suddenly scrambling to schedule more heavyweights. Or at least, put together interesting games.

The move was born in the Big Ten and was a direct response to the ending of the Bowl Championship Series and the creation, starting in 2014, of a four-team playoff where a selection committee will pick the field.

The BCS formula is two-thirds opinion polls and one-third computer rankings. Through the years human voters have shown favoritism to unbeaten major conference teams over a club with one loss, even if that was on the road against a quality opponent. The computers meanwhile didn't factor strength of schedule enough to offset human tendency.

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Major powers adjusted accordingly. In 1988, before the creation of the Bowl Alliance, the precursor to the BCS, there were 15 non-conference games where both teams were ranked in the AP preseason top 20. This year there were just two featuring AP preseason top 20 teams: Alabama-Michigan and Clemson-South Carolina.

While one of the BCS's oft-repeated talking points was that it protected the regular season, it was, in fact, destroying the non-conference portion.

Now it's back to the future as athletic directors across the country place their faith in a selection committee that will rationally analyze a body of work, not just blindly follow records.

For example, Oregon was ranked fifth in the final BCS standings last season, one spot behind Stanford. The Ducks had two losses, but one was to then top-ranked LSU on a neutral field. Stanford had just one loss, but it was to Oregon, by 23 points at home. The Ducks also won the Pac-12 title.

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