I agree that the new standards will force non-BCS teams to play amongst their peers more often. Return games will be needed and those are harder to come by playing the BCS teams. UCF currently gets four I-A home games from the MAC, meaning we need one I-A OOC home game per season. That's not a HUGE task, but it's one we have to pay attention to. Like you said, the SBC schools will face a bigger challenge.

Lets not forget though that those large BCS programs also need the payday games. They're there for a reason. The largest programs make tons of $$$ for each home game. They want seven or eight home games annually, travelling only for conference games. Sure they can schedule more BCS teams, but those teams are gonna want a return game. The larger programs are gonna have less of a pool to choose from to get a I-A payday opponent. They're either gonna have to suck it up and play less home games, or they're gonna have to play more I-AAs.

and playing 1-aa's can bite them, especially when counting towards bowl eligibility. you can only count a 1-aa win once every four years toward the 6-win requirement. judging by the number of 6-5 and 6-6 teams in bowls the last 2-3 years, that would be a disater for borderline bcs teams.

Linked is a report from ncaa.org for attendance stats.

I believe these to be the 2002 attendance figures per home game for Division I-A:

http://ncaa.org/stats/division1%20football/attendance/IA_AVGATTENDANCE.pdf

One thing is for sure, no one can knock fans of the SC schools for attendance. The gamethingy fans in particular are as loyal as Packer fans. I wonder if they travel just as well?

I wonder if the SEC is eyeballing these numbers? The turnout for the title game and any conference road games if Texas and Texas A&M were added would be massive.