It's possibly both. She needs Trump in the immediate future to secure the GOP nomination for governor, but also needs to start positioning herself for a post-Trump GOP.
The competing narratives will be "this is what Trump wants/would have wanted" and they will tear themselves apart fighting over this narrative for the foreseeable future.
There is no leader other than Trump, and that's the problem. He literally calls all of the shots for both the Executive and Legislative branches. Even when he wasn't president he controlled what the House did. He's pretty much the Speaker of the House in addition to being the President, and Johnson is simply the conduit for whatever he wants.
So the problem is twofold for the GOP. First, they need to actually have a consensus on who to elect. Second, that person needs to be willing to be Trump's "errand boy" until they ultimately lose the House next year.
Then they can go back to doing what they do best, which is to simply oppose whatever the Democrats say and do with no ideas or throughs of their own (other than whatever Trump is posting on social media at that moment.)
The problem right now with 12 is the auto-bids. You need 16 for that to make sense. Right now the top 4 conference champs and best G5 champ are auto bids. That only leaves 7 at large spots and is problem when you have the logjam we have right now.
I mean, even when they expand to 16 there will still be hand-wringing over the 16th team, but debating the last team in is the case for any number of participants. People lose their minds over the 68th team in the freaking basketball tournament and those teams have no shot at winning it all.
Ironically while we thought we might be out if FSU won it was actually an Alabama/FSU discussion. They stayed true to their word that head to head mattered.
I think we're out regardless, but a few things I find interesting:
Miami and Notre Dame have really thin resumes as you pointed out.
I think the Big XII is a one bid league and Tech might get left out if they lose to BYU.
I'm very curious what they do with aggy. That ND win was doing all of the heavy lifting for them even as they were undefeated. They really don't have anything on their resume that stands out. If we're left out then aggy should fall to being a road team in the first round IMHO.
One big difference between FSU 2023 and Ole Miss this year is that we all got to witness the horror of a Travisless FSU team whereas we don't get to see Ole Miss play without Kiffin until the playoff/bowl game.
That said, there is absolutely precedent for dropping Ole Miss out of consideration due to the staff changes.
ETA - dropping Ole Miss also screws Kiffin out of any bonuses he would have received for their performance in the playoffs.
I agree with this take. The context of the games matters and we've played a very difficult schedule in the aggregate.
My take on road games was more of "if I was on the committee and had to argue Texas' exclusion, then what would I use?" I was trying to come up with something legitimate other than three losses or the lazy "don't lose to Florida" take.
That's what I was able to come up with.
I admitted that they sucked.
But so do Kentucky and Mississippi State and we looked like ass. We should have crushed those teams.
Seriously, can anyone name one road game - regardless of the competition - that we looked competent other than the second half of Mississippi State?
Anyway this is moot. We're being left out for three losses and these empty suits will dig no deeper.