Interesting program and take on things Joe, I finally made it through every segment. Since you are big on scheduling I will comment on that topic. My strategy (and my advice to all who ask), is to schedule lite for non-con games if you are in a very tough conference and schedule heavy in non-con if you are in a weak conference. I use an imaginary sliding scale when scheduling with this in mind and I shoot for a top 10 SOS for all of my established teams, lower for a team that I'm building. If my team is hovering in the top 5 SOS then I did great! And if cycling between #1 and #2 then I scheduled perfectly. I do this when in D1A whether I'm at an elite school or a non-elite, my goal is to always give my team a chance at a championship. If I'm at an established elite school I don't turn down a request for a game unless I have more requests than open games, or if I have promised someone a game that has not sent a request yet. As soon as I have all of the human coaches on my schedule that I need for that season I fill in the other slots with the best sim coached teams that I can find. I believe that when you get a request to play you should decide as soon as possible if you want that game, and if you are going to decline then do so right away so that the other coach can look for another team to play. As far as non-elites playing elites, if it fits into the above strategy then play them! When I was coaching at Navy and in one of the weakest conferences I couldn't play enough elites. Even if I played an elite school for every non-con I still couldn't get my SOS high enough to play for a Championship because I had teams that were 0-12 on my conference schedule. That was the main reason that I put in for a job at Florida State, in fact, I really did not want to leave my Navy team. But I wasn't satisfied with just having a great team at Navy, I wanted to have the opportunity to have the best team in that world!
I use the above method for scheduling at every level and in every world (Unless I lose track of what I'm doing which happens a lot with this old man), the only time I schedule all sims is when I first take over a dead team and need to get my recruiting vision up. Why even play the game if you are not going to compete? Don't go crazy and schedule all games that you probably will not win, but get out there and be competitive to see how you match up against other coaches and to see how you are progressing as a coach yourself. I have defeated elite schools while still in a rebuild, it doesn't happen very often but it is exhilarating when it does and you can't have that kind of a triumphant feeling if you never play them.
I have sensitive ears and the language is a little offensive but nothing that this sailor has not heard before, I just don't enjoy listening to that kind of talk. But otherwise, it is good to hear someone voice honest opinions and to delve into tricky topics. I can see that you are heading towards talking about the deeper subjects on game theory and various winning philosophies and strategies which should be interesting. Thanks for donating the time and research into an effort to improve the game and the experience that the rest of us have in playing it.