at home in Utah and playing LSU in a near-home game in Houston. Also, Ed Orgeron was the head coach of LSU most of last season, since Les Miles was fired in September, so he isn't a new coach in the way Jim Harbaugh was at Michigan in early September 2015.
I agree with your points about the lead-in to the Wisconsin game. My hope there is that Wisky rarely plays road games so far from home, and they never play at altitude, so I'm hoping those factors offset the fact that we'll be more beat up than them going into that game.