I for one have no interest in playing schools that don't have academic standards anywhere close to ours.  Games against LSU don't excite me in the slightest, it's a rigged setup.  It's going against a completely different paradigm. 

I'd much rather have our schedule be full of the Northwesterns, Dukes, Army/Navy/AF, Vanderbilts, Stanfords, Rices etc of the world (plus a few geographical rivalries like the old MWC schools for sake of tradition).  Those are teams we can compete with most of the time.  Although they don't have nearly the recruiting restrictions that we have, at least they police themselves a little bit academically.   Those are games I'd actually be excited about, playing against other student-athletes.  

At least I'm given to understand that's the case.  I have no data to back that up.

And we've seen that at least sometimes Stanford or Navy or Duke has a really good ranked team.