In the McMurphy “hey what-if” article:
>>But what about the seven independents, specifically Notre Dame? How would they schedule matchups in a conference-only format? What happens to the Army-Navy Game?
The easiest way to do the conference-only schedule might be allowing each school nine “conference” games. The SEC could add another conference game without any issues, while the ACC could have nine schools play Notre Dame and have it count as a conference opponent. The other five ACC league members could each schedule another independent (Army, BYU, UConn, UMass, Liberty or New Mexico State) to get its ninth game.
The independents would have to be very creative with their schedules to get to nine games, perhaps playing some sort of round-robin schedule.<<