Apr 15, 2015 12:38 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Athletic directors of major Division I college football programs are scheduling nonconference games so far in advance, some are unlikely to even be working when they eventually come to pass.

Speaking with ESPN, a number of athletic directors (ADs) said nonconference scheduling has gotten out of hand and seemingly agreed to the notion of creating an unofficial understanding to just stop.

LSU AD Joe Alleva told ESPN, "I'll be long retired" by the time his school plays its home-and-home series against Oklahoma in 2027 and 2028. This kind of extreme uncertainty is deeply troubling for some athletic department officials.

ESPN's Heather Dinich found there to already be a fair amount of opposition to scheduling games so far in advance. However, there are external forces in college football that make it necessary.

Take this year's inaugural College Football Playoff (CFP) for example. The committee that picked the four teams to play for the national title maintained all along that strength of schedule would be a factor in their rankings, which stood apart from other national polls like the Associated Press'.

In the last week of the season, fifth-ranked Ohio State surpassed third-ranked TCU in the CFP's rankings. Ohio State had beaten Wisconsin 59-0 to win the Big Ten Championship while TCU came off a 55-3 win over Iowa State only for the Big 12 to give them a share of the conference title.

"I don't like it at all," Alleva said. "I wish we could only go three or four years, that would be fine with me, but we're kind of stuck in a rut."

So to get into the CFP, teams need to show they can beat quality teams from other conferences. But in the amount of time between now and some of these proposed home-and-home series, even the best programs can lose prestige.

Alleva said he knows peers of his who have had to "scramble" to find nonconference opponents two or three years in advance because teams are booking such games at least five or six years in advance.

"We only schedule basketball games one or two years out, but in basketball, things can change so quickly because kids leave and basketball programs can go up and down really quickly," he told ESPN. "Hopefully in football, there's a little more stability, but who knows what teams are going to be like in 2027 and 2028?"

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