I'm fine with scheduling that has ten P5 level teams a year, however you insert the pastries is up to you.
There is advantage in starting with pasties as a preseason, and advantage in having one before a main rival.
But limit it to two a year.
I think Utee's point about scheduling 8 conference games as opposed to 9 is a valid one. Saying that it all evens out when teams play 10 P5 opponents is just not true. Playing 9 conference games plus an OOC P5 opponent is not the same thing as scheduling 8 conference games and 2 OOC P5 opponents.
The extra conference game means an automatic extra loss for half of the teams in the B1G, the Big 12, and the Pac-12. That affects poll results, bowl eligibility, and bowl selections (which the SEC also games by not committing to an established pecking order among the bowls).
Furthermore, SEC teams mostly do not play that hypothetical 10th P5 opponent. In fact, Bama did not play a 10th P5 opponent last year. It played 8 conference games, Louisville, Arkansas State, UL-L, and The Citadel. I'm not bagging on Bama. To his credit, Saban has publicly argued that the SEC should schedule 9 conference games. But there's more: Ole Miss only played 9 last year, as did LSU, and Florida, and Kentucky, and Georgia, and South Carolina, and Missouri, and Vandy, and Mississippi State, and Texas A&M, and Auburn, and Tennessee. That's 13 SEC teams, and none of them played that 10th P5 opponent. The only other SEC team, Arkansas, didn't even play a 9th P5 opponent.
Compared to that, every team in the B1G, Big 12, and Pac-12 plays at least 9 P5 opponents, and at least half play a 10th one.
That's part of why the SEC so often has two teams competing for a CFP spot. The other part, of course, is that Bama has been so damned good for the entirety of the CFP era.
