Auburn finding marquee opponents hard to come by

Published May. 28, 2015 2:02 p.m. ET

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In the new era of the College Football Playoff, who you play may be as important as who did you beat. Many believe the playoff committee sent a message to Baylor last season that their non-conference schedule just wasn't good enough to get in over Ohio State.

Athletic directors around the nation have taken notice and have begun to schedule more challenging non-conference games in the year's to come. Auburn Athletic Director Jay Jacobs is attempting to follow suit, according to Everything Alabama, but is finding interest in playing the Tigers hard to come by.

"Anybody in the Power 5 that wants to play Auburn, we're in," Jay Jacobs said. "We're a prospect for them."

Auburn is already scheduled to play Louisville this season in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic, a home-and-home series with Clemson in 2016/2017, as well as a home-and-home series with Cal in 2020/2021.

The article suggests the Tigers have attempted to schedule games with Notre Dame, Michigan and Florida State, but teams remain hesitant to play Auburn's up-tempo offense.

"Gus' high-tempo offense, people are reluctant to play it," Jacobs said. "People are reluctant to come into the SEC and play. We'll do whatever is necessary. If it's a neutral site game, a home-and-home, whatever it may be. We want to play the best people we can for our student-athletes and for our fans."

Jacobs also discussed the difficulty in determine which team's will field a strong team so far into the future:

"The challenge is four years from now, who is going to be good?" he said. "You can schedule them today and in four years they may not have the strength of schedule or RPI you'd like, but that's what we're going to do. That's the situation we're in but we're talking to anyone who would talk to us."

Give credit to the playoff era for potentially giving fans a chance at seeing significantly more difficult non-conference schedules in the seasons to come. Of course teams have to step up and be willing to man up and play one another for that to ultimately happen.

(h/t Everything Alabama)