I remember one of the posters (?Scipio) posting on one of the many former versions of this website -- on the subject of OOC games. His opinion was that you either A) get a home game for your fans/donors and eat a cupcake, or B) schedule a perennial OOC power (Michigan, Ohio State, USC, Bama, Notre Dame) in a home-and-home.
"Don't mess with Mister In-Between" was his observation. i.e. don't play teams that aren't a national brand (little or no credit for a win) but they're still good enough to get you in their home stadium and beat you.
Seems to me that pretty much all of the left-behind schools are Mr In-Between.
I could get behind playing a home-home vs a school that's a decent travel destination (Tulane in New Orleans, Colorado in Denver or Boulder). We're not going back to Waco, Ames, or Lubbock in my lifetime though.
That scheduling strategy (and this post) doesn't even take into account the hard feelings and bad blood from our departure.
I have a lot of beefs with shit that our athletic department does poorly (hire coaches, manage your game-day in-stadium experience). But I think they've done a solid job of scheduling. Lots of big-name matchups, a few cupcakes at home. We've also stayed away from scheduling a bunch of the you've-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me matchups of our future SEC brethren. Our Aggie brethren have scheduled Lamar, Abeline Christian, Incarnate Word, etc. Ugh.