perhaps. ranking them 3rd implies they dont have much faith in them, but people rationalize the irrational all the time and they are the most recent national champion and the last time they lost was 28 games ago. with a fsu loss, i dont think they should be there, but it doesnt mean it wont be rationalized. hell, "they" are pumping up a team that lost to virginia tech at home by 2 td's and some media have a 2 loss ucla team in their final 4. there are a lot of agendas being pushed right now and most of them are anti msu. in a blind resume, we are golden, but it has a popularity contest feel to it. all i have to say is thank goodness jeff long is chairman.
also, if fsu lost to florida and beat ga tech in the acc championship, they would be conf champions essentially putting them in the same territory as ohio state (assuming they win out), oregon (assuming they win out), and bama (assuming they win out). how do you differentiate between the one loss teams in fsu, osu, oregon, baylor, state, tcu, and alabama? some say strength of wins, some say weakness of loss, some say sos, and more recently, there is a conference champion push. if records are equal with top teams having 1 loss (or in some cases better, as they have an extra W in their column for having won the conference championship game), all it takes is for the committee to say, "we considered everything, but in the end, we decided that if you did not win your conference in a true conference tournament, you didnt deserve to play for the national title"...and that would be all she wrote. they dont have to explain any further and america gets what it wants despite us being one of the best 4 teams in the country. outside of the south, nobody would really give a **** if state got left out in favor of a bama, ohio state, florida state, and oregon final 4. networks would be salivating for that outcome and it would be convenient for the committee to say the 4 1-loss conference champions get to play for the title, pat us, tcu, and baylor on the head, and send us to our very nice consolation bowls. obviously, that assumes a lot and i expect at least one of those team to suffer a loss in their conference title game, but we, at this point, look to be entirely dependent on other teams losing for us to get in. maybe im wrong....that is a distinct possibility, but thats how i see it regardless of what the committee has said they will and will not consider, as that seems to fluctuate wildly from week to week.