The Florida State football team is 13-0 and champions of the ACC, one of the “Power 5” conferences that supposedly exists within the NCAA on a plane higher than that of the rest of the college football world. It used to be that the notion of an undefeated Power 5 conference champion missing out on the College Football Playoff was considered to be unprecedented, unless of course we arrived at the still-yet-to-be-seen point where all five of the Power 5 conference champions finished their season undefeated, in which case one team would need to be left out of the field.

This year, Florida State was one of three undefeated Power 5 conference champions — along with Michigan and Washington — so one would assume that given everything we had known about the way the College Football Playoff selection process worked, the Noles would get in. However, a late-season injury to starting quarterback Jordan Travis kept FSU from being included in the four-team field.

In 2017, about 270 miles southeast of Tallahassee, the UCF Knights completed their season with a perfect 13-0 record, an AAC title, and a win over Auburn in the Peach Bowl. From that point on, as the last undefeated team standing in the 2017 college football season, the Knights made the somewhat justified claim that they were the rightful National Champions. Now, just six years later, we're quickly approaching a scenario where the Florida State Seminoles could wind up making the very same claim — only it's overwhelmingly likely that their claim as national champs would be taken much more seriously than UCF's. And it won't just be Noles fans who are making the claim.

The Seminoles still have business to take care of in the Orange Bowl, a New Year's Six matchup with the two-time defending National Champion Georgia Bulldogs, a game which Florida State is currently somewhere around a 16-point underdog, in large part because of the long list of players who have already opted out of the game. But the Noles players who will actually be playing in the Orange Bowl have a firm grasp on what it is they're playing for.

“Don’t let us win, that’s all I’m going to say,” claims FSU defensive back Shyheim Brown. “They’re going to hate us if we win.” (h/t Jordan Silversmith of Tomahawk Nation)

The “they” that Shyheim Brown is referring to is likely the fanbase of whatever team ends up being crowned champions of the College Football Playoff, because if Florida State handles their business against Georgia, to a man the Noles will make the claim that they're the real world's champion, like they're the Nature Boy Ric Flair in 1991.