You're right that Ohio's success over the last decade has led to more of these midweek games. The good teams get put on TV. It's good for that but bad for fans who want to go to games.

Hate to say it but if you think the average person watching these midweek games tunes in because the team or teams might have a good record, you are fooling yourself. Other than diehard fans of the school, the only folks watching are those who would watch anything on tv that moves.

Pataskala has it correct. BYU is even regretting their independent decision so much they've thought about going back to the Mountain West. And I think I read somewhere that Army could join Navy in the AAC.

The majority of the fans would prefer Saturday games. However the coaching staff is able to point out to prospective recruits that Ohio is on ESPN much of the last month of the season and that seems to help recruiting. Maybe LC can research to see if the Bobcats have improved recruiting wise since the MAC started these mid week night TV games?

It's impossible to answer that because recruiting rankings are essentially meaningless at the 2-star and lower 3-star level. Very little effort goes into evaluating and rating those players because the ratings service gets no revenue from it. Their revenue comes largely from subscribers who are fans of the top 30 teams, and so that's where they, justifiably, put their effort. Note that the Ohio players who have been drafted have generally been unheralded, and un-ranked. Here are some ratings of players:
2003 - McRae - unrated
2004 - Cohen - unrated
2005 - Mitchell - Scout 1 star, Rivals 5.1 (an average rating back then)
2006 - Price - Scout 2 stars, Rivals 5.3 (both good ratings at the time)
2007 - Brazill - Scout 1 star, Rivals 5.0 (both= unrated)
2008 - Herman - Scout 1 star, Rivals 5.1 (both low/unrated)
2008 - Carrie - Scout 1 star, Rivals 5.1 (both low/unrated)
2012 - B. Brown - Scout 2 stars, Rivals 5.2 (both minimums for that time)
2013 - Poling - Scout 2 stars, Rivals 5.2 (both minimums)
2013 - Basham - Scout 2 stars, Rivals 5.4 (better, but still 2 stars)

Not a single 3 star recruit among the players drafted.

The only real way to measure it is to look at the MAC as a whole, and see if they are more competitive now than previously. I see a couple ways to measure that. First, is the MAC more competitive in bowls than in the past? Here's the bowl record:
2017 1-4 (0-1 versus P5)
2016 0-6 (0-2 versus P5)
2015 3-4 (0-1 versus P5)
2014 2-3
2013 0-5 (0-1 versus P5)
2012 2-5
2011 4-1 (0-1 versus P5)
2010 2-2 (0-1 versus P5)
2009 1-4 (0-1 versus P5)

If there is a trend, it's in the wrong direction.

Next, let's look as average MAC Sagarin ratings. Is the MAC becoming more competitive in the landscape of football? If we exclude Temple and UMass, and look at the core 12 MAC teams, the league averages have been:

2017 59.16
2016 59.86
2015 60.66
2014 57.26
2013 58.13
2012 61.39
2011 61.61
2010 57.36
2009 60.00
2008 61.26
2007 58.42
2006 61.84
2005 63.09
2004 57.71
2003 64.51

Once again, I see nothing here to indicate that the MAC has improved since the mid-week games began.

There are lots more questions you could ask. For example, if the point of being on TV is to connect alums to the school, have MAC schools seen a boost in giving to their general fund from being on TV more? If the point is to increase exposure to more potential students, and attract better students, have average test scores gone up or down across the MAC? If the point is to get TV revenue, have athletic deficits increased or decreased since the start of mid-week MACtion?

BTW, it's entirely possible that mid-week games do increase the quality of recruits, but that they are also disruptive enough to their schedule that they hurt the performance by an offsetting amount. The point is, there are many possible objectives, and it's hard to know which have been accomplished, if any.

I personally would prefer if the mid-week games went away, and were replaced by Saturday games, with many/most of them on ESPN+, and only rarely being on broadcast TV. I don't know what that would do to the budget, though. It might mean they had to have one more "money game" a year, meaning a road game against a P5 team for money, and thus there might only 5 home games a year, one of them being an FCS team.

Then add the MAC TV money on top of this plus bonus money. If its 25-30 million dollars split 12 ways that is 2 to 2.5 million in TV money that has to be accounted for in any new scheduling model. Payday games these days however pay upwards of 2 million. Ohio goes independent and could schedule an extra pay day game or two to make up for the loss of TV money. Scheduling I'd expect UMass, Liberty and New Mexico State on the schedule every year in November. The more schools that go independent the easier it is to schedule independent.

I'm not saying people watch those games because the teams have good records. I'm just saying Ohio gets picked to be in a lot of these games because it always has a good record.