...You would know that college football non-conference schedules are created 4-5 years in advance. Yes, Mack has been coach at Texas for 8 years. Due to the lead-time for these non-conference games, some teams were scheduled at the height of their run, and then faded prior to actually facing the Longhorns (North Carolina 2001/2002?). Others are simply good games: Arkansas 03/04, OSU 05/06.

Does Texas schedule cream puffs? Of course they do. Every good football team does, since in college ball, there's no pre-season. What about USC this year? Who'd they play out-of-conference? Hawaii? Arkansas? (Note: I'll admit that the Arkansas game was likely scheduled when Arkansas was a better team than they were this year.) Yes, they also played Gonzaga and ND. ND might as well be a conference game for them, since the two always play -- just as OU and Texas did every year before the invention of the Big 12 in 1996.

Sum record of Big 12 opponents faced by Texas this year: 52-42. (9 conference games, including 2 against Colorado.) 0.553 winning percentage.
Sum record of Pac 10 opponents faced by USC this year: 49-43. (8 conference games.) 0.532 winning percentage.

So the quality of Big 12 opponents (even counting both games against Colorado) was higher than what USC faced in the Pac 10.

Texas' record from 2000-2005? 65-11. Percentage? 0.855.
Texas' record from 1998-2005 (since Mack Brown started coaching)? 83-19. Percentage? 0.814.

I'll take that any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.