Note to everyone: all teams VT beats this year are overrated and Illinois is a national powerhouse.
The ridiculousness of your proposition would seem to indicate I'm overhyping the Illini and under-respecting VT.
But of course, your apparent proposition is just as ridiculous: that the Illini are a talentless, horrible team that have no shot at a bowl game, and VT is a national title contender.
The reality of course lies somewhere in between. Illinois is not a good as Miami this year, but of course, we didn't lose to them. Beat them pretty handily in fact. Virginia Tech is a perennially overrated team. Don't get me wrong, I love em. Beamer ball rocks. But they are not top 5, and if they were, that says more about the lack of quality teams this year than the strength of their team.
Don't forget how badly they got spanked by Alabama. Miami, meanwhile, is a young team that didn't play its best, and at the same time, was never a top 10 team anyway. 3 weeks ago, people thought the FSU/Miami game would be a snoozer. But a couple of decent but not great wins later they're an unstoppable powerhouse? Preseason rankings can be way off, but sportswriters clearly got a case of starstruck love looking at all their playmakers, and forgetting that they're a) young and B) don't have a particularly good defense.
On the flip side, Mizzou hasn't played anyone nearly as good as Nebraska, but we have played competition that has been good enough to test us, and that's worth something. NU fans wanting to dismiss us will naturally say that being tested shows Mizzou is weak. I think a more balanced opinion of someone who watched the games sees a young, imperfect team that's capable of both bad things and great things. If the former shows up, you'll beat us. If the latter shows up, I think we run away with the game and it's not close. Somewhere in the middle, where it's likely to be, it's a competitive game.