Not too soft or you'll get dinged for strength of schedule.
Sac State - weaker FBS, middle FCS, weaker FCS
Montana State - stronger FBS, 2 weaker FCS
Idaho - 2 FBS, weaker FCS
UC Davis - strong FBS, strong FCS, weaker FCS
Griz - 1 moderate FCS, 2 weaker FCS
Generally in the Big Sky, you're getting risky if you schedule more than 1 tough OOC game. But it depends on who's on your conference schedule - UC Davis played the 4 top Big Sky teams; MSU only had to play 3. Add in that when you're scheduling a team is usually years ahead, so who knows whether they'll be tough or cupcakes by then.
It also depends on your conference - MVFC might get enough schedule strength from just conference games, other conferences might need to be more aggressive in their OOC schedule
"Truax [Bucknell AD] provided several reasons for UM’s inclusion ... challenged themselves in cross-conference matchups. — movielover
“UC Davis made a late push to get in there … and while they showed well, they only finished with six D-I wins … every other team we were talking about had seven.” — movielover
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