Yeah I'm old enough to remember us playing A&M. The problem is LSU really only ever had one rival, and we drummed them out of the conference and basically out of football and that's Tulane. They tried to make Arkansas a rival and gave us a goofy trophy that nobody liked, made us play on Friday after thanksgiving. Nobody cared. Now they are doing it with A&M. Most of the other SEC schools have a traditional rival but really the people at LSU don't care, each week you play like it's a rival game.
It's also super fucking aggrevating that A&M joins the conference and has been in one year and they get to bring on their traditions with them, while our biggest tradition that we are known for gets shit on all the time and we only get to break it out now maybe 3 games a year at most, and mostly for the crap teams which is why we schedule a few crap teams so we can play at night. But we have to kiss A&M's ass in their second year. It's tied to TV but the SEC president could push his weight around and change it a few times a year as the previous president (Kramer who came up with the BCS) did.
People ask why LSU plays 2-3 cupcakes a year, well that's why. If we schedule Oregon, Washington, TCU, West Virginia etc...for the most part those games get played during the day. We have to play Towson, Kent State etc...so that we can have a night game, which LSU has been doing since 1931.