That does make sense, for many a season an early season loss was much better than a late season loss & the schedule/opponent sometimes had too much sway in the voters minds. Team A could lose to a crappy team early on while team B lost to a great team late in the season and gets penalized for it. In 2003 Lsu was helped by that scenario somewhat, although USC lost to good but not great team.
If there had been an 8 team playoff in 2001 LSU would have gotten in. At 9-3 and SEC Champs I still don't know if they would have made the 4 team playoffs but at the end of the year they were the hottest team in football. I'm not saying they would have beaten Miami but thay were for sure better than anybody else.