This will hold true because the voters will reward any win and punish any loss. When No. 1 Missouri lost to Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship Game last year, do you think the pollsters gave one bit of thought to the Tigers' season-opening win against eventual Rose Bowl team Illinois?
At that time, the voters didn't care about that game any more than they cared about Ohio State's season opener against Youngstown State.
Conference games decide BCS berths. Last year, all the turnover in the top five spots of the polls wasn't from other top-ranked teams—non-ranked teams kept beating the highly-ranked schools.
LSU won all their big games: Virginia Tech, Florida, Auburn, Alabama. Non-ranked Kentucky and Arkansas knocked off LSU, and the LSU games were the Cats' and Hogs' national championship games.
Conference schedules are, for the most part, brutal already. There's no reason to risk a costly early-season loss that could cost a team a BCS berth, not to mention a shot at a national title.
Kudos to the athletic directors and coaches for looking for more and more big nonconference matchups these days. Most seem to be using the 12th regular season game this way.
However, they need to make sure they're doing so for the fans, recruiting exposure, money, players' interests, or whatever else justifies it.
Because they're definitely not doing it for postseason positioning.
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