Plea to Woodward and Ausberry to end the Schedule Conundrum

Apologies for the long-winded post, but we REALLY need to reach out to Woodward and Ausberry to stop the madness of starting against difficult opponents. I realize this has been spoken about ad nauseum, but I want to show the results of the rankings to prove my point:

LSU beat Ole Miss and SCAR head-to head and finished with an 8-4 record. LSU finished unranked in the playoff rankings and behind teams like ULL and Tulane in the AP/Coaches Poll. Now, let's pretend we did not play that USC game and scheduled an opponent like Western Kentucky instead (I realize that we should have beaten USC, and Kelly absolutely needs to do a better job of getting the team ready to play opening games like Les did during his tenure. But even so, let's continue this exercise). If LSU plays Westen Kentucky, they finish the season 9-3 with head-to head wins over Ole Miss and SCAR and 5-3 in the SEC with a non-conf win over UCLA. With a brand and SOS similar to LSU's, what ranking do you think LSU gets? I would say certainly over teams like BYU, Mizzou, UNLV, Illinois, Syracuse, Colorado, Army, and Memphis. Therefore, we would finish ranked 17th worst case scenario and you could make the argument that we would finish 13th over Ole Miss and SCAR due to the head-to head victory component.

Now let's pretend LSU played USC and had beaten them finishing 9-3 with the same record against everyone else. What ranking does LSU get? I'd argue the EXACT same had we not even played them. 17th would be the floor and 13th would be the ceiling. You may say that does not matter we had our chances to win vs Florida and A&M and blew it and you'd be correct. I realize 13th would still not be good enough for the playoffs. However, this experiment is to show how much rankings hinge on record over quality wins. At the end of the day, the committee will use whatever reasoning they want to let a team in (just as they did both years with Bama, particularly last year with Bama over FSU)but WHY SHOULD WE CONTINUE TO MAKE IT HARDER FOR OURSLEVES TO MAKE THE PLAYOFFS.

Let's take last year as anther example. If LSU played Colorado instead of FSU, they would have finished 10-2. If the playoffs were the same format as this year, LSU would NOT have made it last year at 9-3. They WOULD have made it at 10-2. Again why take ourselves out of it. I understand wanting excting games to open the season, but until this thing ends up in an NFL style format, why give ourselves a disadvantage when we already play in the grueling SEC. I can already see a scenario unfolding next year where LSU finishes 9-3 with a road loss to Clemson and is left out of the playoffs behind a team like Missouri that we would clearly be favored over but have an extra loss due to schedule discrepancies. This needs to stop until the sport is transitioned to a better format.