Apologies if this was covered elsewhere, I haven't been able to find anything on it...

We had a nonconference game scheduled against Utah for this Saturday. Then they entered the Pac-12 and we were forced to go with Missouri State as a last-minute replacement, to fulfill the constraints of the conference schedule. Yet AFAIK Cal and Colorado just played an intra-conference "nonconference" game last week. What's the distinction that allowed them to go ahead with their matchup while we had to settle for kicking around whatever tomato can that wanted a paycheck?