It is clear that the risk/reward profile of playing P5s is much better than playing G5. Beat a good g5 (boise) and it doesn't do much for us. Lose to a good g5 (CCU, on a short week, by 1 yard) and it really hurts. Compare that to beating a bad p5, and losing to a bad p5 (LSU anyone?).

Class rules college football. (Another way of putting it, it's a scheme where the risk gets offloaded onto the lower classes.) BYU is screwed by class, but in Indy we are less screwed than in the AAC. So I think the best we can do is schedule as many P5s as possible, preferably bad ones, and schedule the remainder with bad g5s where we are heavy favorites.

I would have loved to see BYU go through 6 weak and down P5s this season. It would have solidified indy instead of Jarom Jordan's position on bad indy schedules. The lesson is the same though: in a covid year with barely any interconference play, class remained way more important than anything. And BYU got a shoutout for playoff access from Barta, while we watched national news media herald BYU's indy P5 schedules. I don't really believe the playoff access, but I do think we have real NY6 access as indy, next year with 1 or maybe even 2 losses if they are at the right time and team...though I don't predict that record with Wilson gone. And I think that's actually a bit more NY6 access than we'd have in the AAC, despite the autobid (how many times would we be AAC champ in the 2020s with BSU, SDSU and UCF, Cinci, Memphis, SMU, etc...?).

Level of competition is similar, but it hurts worse with g5 status.
Money, well we disagree.
Indy NY6 access is better I think.
And a much wider exposure.