with careful planning, you should be able to get reward seats in BF at the standard level. as with all rewards, being elite and being extremely flexible is the key. i believe you can book 350 days out so you should start checking then. inventory comes and goes, so dont be discouraged if it takes months to book. i belive you can also book at the BF level, confirm in coach and then gradually be upgrade as the seats become available, not 100% sure on that though.

be sure you're always logged into co.com as it has slightly better inventory than non elites.

the biggest catch is to check availability for each segment rather than the entire trip. if there is one segment that is not available, the entire trip will not show.

for instance, i did msy-gig and got nothing. i did iah-gig and got it, then i did msy-iah and got a early flight. the system originally denied me b/c the msy-iah that would normally correspond with the iah-gig flight was not available. hence, flexibility.