"It's mostly about who has an opening when you have an opening," Hill said. "We want to have as representative a schedule as we can, but not so tough that we don't give our team some chance at success. We don't want to play Florida, Tennessee, Alabama and Michigan all in the same year, and we've got to get teams that are willing to come to our place.

"That's usually not the top 10 teams in the nation, but a lot of Pac-10 teams like UCLA will play us a home-and-home. What we try to do is play two schools that have automatic BCS tie-ins. Then we play Utah State, and figure out another game to play."

Holmoe's philosophy is similar, but with a few key differences. The Cougars also try to schedule two BCS teams, one at home and one on the road, as well as USU and one other school. But for BYU, while the Pac-10 makes the most sense geographically, there are more options it looks for because of its religious affiliation and academic standards.

"One of the things I love to do is play teams that are similar to us in terms of academic reputation," Holmoe said. "Your players are doing the same things in the classroom. You're recruiting the same kind of players that have to do really well academically. Northwestern would be a great game because of that. We've played Boston College and Notre Dame, which have been a pleasure to play. Those are important things, and Bronco likes it, too."

Other things Holmoe says he has to consider are the pockets of football-hungry Mormons around the country. With the new television package, a road game in a distant part of the country may be the only time members of the LDS church will be able to see the Cougars play in person until bowl season.

"Our alums are all over the country," Holmoe said. "There are a lot of people all over the place that the only time they'll get to see BYU is if we come to them. We want to play where we recruit, so that's why we play in the West a lot, but we have pockets of people in different places. Like when we played Georgia Tech, the people from the South in various states came out because that might be the one time they get to see BYU. We played BC, a lot of people from New England got to see the game, and that's something we keep in mind, trying to get to different parts of the country."

These two variables, unique to BYU when compared to Utah State and Utah, make it a little easier to commit to a 2-for-1 series with a historic program. Holmoe said BYU rarely, if ever, OKs a one-time "buy game."

"That's another thing we have that's a huge advantage for us," Holmoe said. "When we played BC, we had about 7,000 people at the game. They don't draw a lot of people to Chestnut Hill. The BC AD told me, 'Wow, you fly a lot of people out here,' and I told him, 'No, they live right here.' So wherever we play, we bring fans. I'm trying to get a game with Hawaii, get this rivalry started up again. They know that if we play (at Aloha Stadium), it will sell out.