You don't see the difference? Purdue has SOS of 25 and the teams they play all contend for their conference championships.
Wilson,
No I dont see a big difference since both Va Tech & Purdue scheduled every one of those teams w an easy win in mind. My point being, that everybody does it. The real strength of Purdue's schedule comes from their own conference. Most Big Ten teams have high SOS rankings.
The SOS rankings & the RPI have more to do with media projections than actual team capabilities. I dont take those things seriously when I handicap games.
And if Purdue was looking to play non conf games v teams that could contend for those titles, then why did they skip all the teams that contended for the Big East, ACC & Big 12 titles? Purdue should always be better than the MEAC champ! And I'm sure Purdue's AD knows that when he schedules these games.