Never since '84 has there been that guarantee. Shoot, in all but a couple of those years, it was a guarantee at 0-0 that there is no world in which we'd be allowed to play for a National Championship, no matter what we did the next 12 or 13 games.
Feels good that the only thing keeping us from The National Title is the ridiculously low probability of winning the next 12 games, not that we'd be passed over even if we won the next 8 of them.