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Wisconsin.

They have to play OSU, Michael gan and Michigan State all in the same year.

Which is something PSU has to do every year.

In fact MD, Rut and Indy have it even worse and have to play OSU,  Mich, MSU and PSU every year.

I figure for a top 15 team, it does not matter whether you play a semi-decent G5 team or 1-AA battery team, you should beat both handily.  I think it's tougher to play the A&M schedule with 3 absolute pastries than playing say 3 teams ranked 15-25 and 3 half way decent G5 OOC opponents.  Of course, as noted, some of these opponents may be "Florida State".  I'd guess A&M scheduled Clemson in 2010 or so when Clemson was not at its current level.

South Carolina is the pegged cross division rival and has never beaten A&M in the SEC, which is interesting.

Georgia plays A&M (Home) and Auburn (away) in conference play, not the end of the world, and ND (home) and GT (away) OOC, which is decent.  That is a decent enough schedule without being overwhelming I think.

Preseason rankings are for "clicks", they don't really matter any more, but they do provide a broad clue about which teams are expected to be good obviously.  While it's easy to note the times they get it wrong, most of the top 20 or so teams are going to do pretty well, maybe 5 end up unranked.  The top three almost always end up top ten, and the top ten usually end up ranked somewhere.  It's not like it's some random assemblage, it has some value, but isn't perfect.

Do you not know WHY they stay ranked? 

If your whole conference is ranked, and you lose to a ranked team, then beat a ranked team the next week, then you probably won't drop far. 

Did you notice that a week or two before Clemson played a team, they ended up in the Top 25 before playing them?  Amazing, don't you think? Yet, only Syracuse ended up ranked.

Very interesting. Clemson practically played an FCS schedule all year to get into the top 4.

Do you not know WHY they stay ranked?

If your whole conference is ranked, and you lose to a ranked team, then beat a ranked team the next week, then you probably won't drop far.

Did you notice that a week or two before Clemson played a team, they ended up in the Top 25 before playing them?  Amazing, don't you think? Yet, only Syracuse ended up ranked.

Very interesting. Clemson practically played an FCS schedule all year to get into the top 4.

A decided meh to the first part. Alas, that overranked conference often seems to do better by the mathematical models. 

It's the second part I'm more interested in. 

First, the ranked just before they played Clemson part is either wrong or at least overstated this year. Clemson played two whole teams ranked at the time last year. It was NC State, then 5-0 and behind 11 1-loss teams, and Boston College, then 7-2, the last two-loss P5 team and about to lose three in a row to end things. 

That total of two matches their final total of No. 15 Syracuse and No. 16 A&M.

Second, this FCS schedule thing. It turn out, if that's an FCS schedule, most of FCS plays them. It makes me wonder why we at all need the qualifier. This was the batch of teams they faced:
10-3 Syracuse
9-4 NC State
8-5 Duke
7-6 Wake Forest
7-6 BC
7-7 Pitt
7-6 Ga. Tech
5-7 FSU
2-10 Louisville


Non-Conf
9-4 A&M
10-3 Georgia Southern
7-6 South Carolina
FCS

I'm not gonna say it was a bunch of world beaters and none of them are close to Clemson, but that's fine. Pretty acceptable for a program in a conference  doing nothing to help.

It's weird, I find myself mildly disagreeing with this. Not because I love the practice, but just because I think the benefit to the non-P5 team is nice assuming we live in a world where teams want to schedule wins.

At a point, a team is trying to get wins in the non-conference and balance home games for revenue reasons. If you say "no FCS" you make Kent State, Tulane and Western Kentucky richer, but you're just kind of moving pieces around. If you're a passible P5 team, you should beat 6-6 Central Michigan anyway, so I don't know it's worlds different than 8-4 Wofford.

And if that's the case, I don't mind letting a bunch of FCS kids get to play in a big stadium and have a story to tell, while infusing those programs with funds they need. Heck, some of those teams turn out pretty good.

I wonder if banning those long term gives G5 teams enough leverage to get more home games, a weird side effect whose value I'm split on. I know Bama set up a 2-for-1 wit USF, though I'm not clear A. if it ever happens, B. What the upside is outside letting kids from that part of the world get a closer look at them in what I assume would be an NFL stadium.

For me, if you only have 12 opportunities to watch your team, plus hopefully a bowl, you should be trying to put a compelling product out there for fans. 

While I [as a fan of a team for whom it's not a foregone conclusion that they'll reach 6 wins] understand the goal of scheduling wins, and of maximizing home games for revenue purposes, I also don't really get excited to watch Purdue play the Indiana State Sycamores. 

And even worse... What if you lose? Purdue has never lost to an FCS team. As much as I love the schadenfreude of watching other teams lose to FCS teams [always a good David v Goliath thing going on there], I don't want to see my own team wear that indignity. It's bad to lose to a MAC team, but it's embarrassing to lose to an FCS team.

Purdue has an OOC this year of @Nevada, Vanderbilt, and TCU. I think those are compelling games to watch, even if Vandy is in the cellar as far as P5 teams go. Purdue mopping the floor with Indiana State isn't a compelling game to watch.

Even some of the SEC schools are starting to realize this. Florida is finally scheduling non-con series besides Florida State. 

This is just from turnover in the athletic dept.  Gone is longtime AD Foley, gone has been HC Spurrier.  Zook and Meyer just continued what had been working under Foley & Spurrier.  Well, the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" didn't apply anymore, as things began to break under Muschamp and McElwain.  

So 2 university presidents removed, 3 HCs removed, and a newish AD, Florida finally has new, original minds making such decisions.  The Gators could very well continue playing FSU and 3 cupcakes, and routinely have a top-20 SOS...they're just choosing not to anymore.

IN 2017, the teams that would have made it would have been:

Ohio State (winners of the team most often on the cusp award)
Wisconsin
Auburn (with three losses)
USCw

PSU and Miami just missed at 9 and 10 resp.  The four seed won it that year (in OT), so it's certainly very possible a 5-8 could win it.  Imagine Auburn beat Oklahoma and then won out (they were dinged up late in the year, so they might have been healthy).  They would be 13-3 and National Champion, but not conference champion (which happened anyway).