Boise was built by consistantly beating pac 12 schools. They dominated the pacific northwest pac 12 schools. They swept a series with Oregon including winning in autzen. They crushed wazzu, and oregon state. The only time a pac 12 school beat them was washington in jake lockers freshman year. Boise was built beating the bigboys.
TCU also scheduled up they scheduled and beat baylor, tech and in a memorable game upset oklahoma in norman. Their giant killer reputation and results got them into the big 12.
It makes sense to schedule up its how a program gets recognition. The only way to change perceptuon is to compete with and beat the best.
I love playing Arkansas and Tech its exciting and is a good measuring stick. My only complaint is scheduling a money when you only have 5 home games and one is against an fcs school who you have to pay to play. We would have made more money playing a sixth home game rather than a money game.
Boise was not built beating Pac-10 schools. They didn't beat their first Pac 10 school until 2004 when they beat a 7-5 Oregon St team. By then they had already had a 13-1, 12-1, 8-4, 10-2, & 10-3 seasons in 5 consecutive years. During those years they lost all their regular season matchups vs P5 schools. (UCLA, Arkansas x2, Washington St x2, South Carolina, and Oregon St). Their only win vs a P5 school was vs Iowa St in a bowl game. Wouldn't you say those 5 seasons "built" the program? When they beat Oregon, Wazzau, and Oregon St, they were already an established, winning program.
TCU lucked out and landed a spot in the '98 Sun Bowl upsetting USC. The next year they lost to Arizona and Northwestern, still managed to get to the GMAC Bowl and won it. The next season they beat Northwestern in Fort Worth and made a bowl game. TCU beat Northwestern again in 2002 and won the Liberty Bowl vs Colorado St. In 2003 they beat a pair of 2-10 schools in Vandy and Arizona, they beat Northwestern the following season. They then beat an 8-4 OU team in 2005 and beat Iowa St in their bowl game that year.
TCU got to their level by beating their conference opponents, winning bowl games, and scheduling BCS teams that weren't that great. That's what its going to take for UTEP. So yeah I'm right, Boise and TCU did not start beating Top 25 teams right away, they started small. Again, its better for UTEP to beat EMU by 1 point than to lose to Texas by 50, no matter how much the university makes for that game.