Honestly, I don't think most of "the media" cares much one way or the other. They tend to root for the best story.
This is kind of a silly debate. If we go undefeated we're playing for the national championship. That's true for any major conference team, in part because it's so damn hard to go undefeated in a major conference that there's never been more than two teams that have done it in the BCS, 12-game and a conference championship, era.
Where SOS matters in this is picking among the 1-loss teams, or among the 2-loss teams for access to a BCS bowl. But, especially in the latter category, fan base matters too. And in that department we do just fine.
I think dropping Michigan increases the urgency of scheduling one more high-profile opponent - i.e. Oklahoma - beyond the ACC and USC/Stanford. Stanford, MSU and much of the ACC are too inconsistent to be a reliably big game the way Michigan was. And you do need to play big games if you want to be, you know, "relevant." But if we do that, we're fine.
