Suppose WVU played Pitt every year, which they absolutely should. If Pitt was consistently a sub-.500 program people would view that game the same way they view (or don't bother to view) CU-Colorado State: a total waste of time. But if Pitt and WVU are both good, people know that's going to be a great game, they tune in, enjoy watching it, and come away thinking more highly of both programs. There are some great inter-conference annual rivalries in college football. For most of its history Oklahoma-Texas was one of them. South Carolina-Clemson, Georgia-GT, Louisville-Kentucky, USC-Notre Dame, etc. All of these games elevate the profiles of those schools when both teams are good, but if one of them is consistently garbage (like GT and South Carolina recently in those series) people lose interest and the series loses value for both programs, even the one that wins it every year.
Personally, I just like looking at TCU schedule and seeing the greatest possible number of games I'm excited about in August. A good SMU program moves that needle for me more than a random non-conference foe of equal quality. I'd rather play, say, an SMU squad that might 8 games than, say, an 8-win ACC school that I don't really care about. That game would be fine, but the annual fixture against a historic rival does more. I'd like to see TCU non-conference schedule every year be a decent one-off home-and-home series, SMU, and a middling G5 team, e.g., Marshall (not FCS).
