That's a distortion. You try to paint our football history as if OU were Tulane or SMU that played for decades in a major conference only to fall from grace and become a G5 school. At best in those early 20th century decades Ohio was the same a good FCS program today that in a great year could take down power programs but normally played small schools. Prior to the BCS system Ohio never had major bowl access and the MAC was FBS in name only. Today I will agree Ohio's on the level of Tulane and SMU and no different than other rank and file FBS schools but its a relatively recent development. A development to thank McDavis for realizing the importance of.
I'd argue that we were above "FCS" level back then. We've always been about where we are relative to the college football world, IMO.
That is correct. Wes has some false analogies in his reasoning, but we've argued about this before, and I don't think he's about to change his opinion. The major flaw in his argument is that he underestimates the relative place in the football world of the 1920s and '30s of the many private and parochial schools that dotted OHIO's schedule, along with the state schools. Heck, St. Mary's of California was a national power back in that era.
Here's a quote: from California historian Kevin Starr from his book, "The Dream Endures":
"Interesting enough, it was not Cal or Stanford, or even USC or UCLA, that took [the] football message [that West Coast schools were on par with the East Coast schools] most powerfully to the nation in the 1920s and 1930s. It was the much-smaller St. Mary's College in Moraga Valley and coach Madigan who received most attention from the national media. ... By the late 1920s, the Gaels had become one of the best-known football teams in the nation."