Guys I played in the NLL which is the top conference in NW Ohio and also scrimaged the farm boy squads of the Western Buckeye League (WBL) regarded a strong football conference with large rural districts. When I did playing in the secondary I was as large as their OL. I outweighed their skill players by 40 pounds (215 vs. 175). NW Ohio is a medicore area for producing D1 college players as a whole. Yes there is more depth than SE Ohio but that isn't saying much. NW Ohio is not analogous to recruiting Chicago or Michigan either its its own place. Toledo and BG happen to be a lot closer to Chicago and Michigan and that Ohio landed a lot more regional recruits this season across the Midwest shows progress to me.

BG did get a lot of the regional MAC players in the past but noticing they have to rely on more local players before means they are digging deeper into the talent pool. Akron I believe is doing the same thing in NE Ohio which has far more overall talent than NW Ohio by a factor of 10x.

I played all the DI/DIIs (the handful NW has) and half of the DIII. Handwritten scouting reports of teams with future Big Ten players (3 that I can recall). Its not the DFW of HS recruiting. Its a half step above SE Ohio and 3 steps down from the talent level of the three Cs.

There are Division V schools can punch above their weight and compete with DII programs in football. That is entirely not the same punching above their weight in producing college prospects as if they are a metro Columbus HS. While relavent to consider in HS football scheduling its not relavent in MAC recruiting.

Team winning percentages from 1994-2023 (past 30 seasons).

https://mcubed.net/ncaaf/ncaafera.py?sorttype=teams&year1...

Toledo 64.7%
Northern IL 52.5%
Western Mich. 51.7%
Ohio 50.6%
Miami 50.1%
Bowling Green 48.6%
Central Mich. 46.4%
Ball State 43.2%
Buffalo 34.8%
Eastern Mich. 33.2%
Akron 33%
Kent State 31.6%

Modern historical average has Ohio above Miami and BG. Buffalo it seems is the one who exceeded its historical performance in recent years.

TA has only averaged 7.67 wins per year in his 3 seasons so his record isn't really that much of a historical outlier compared to what some of the coaches at Buffalo had been doing.

We're doing our part to ensure a Sarah McLachlan video isn't made on raising funds for a fellow BA'er's next speeding ticket into Athens......

Exactly. You have to be careful about selection bias when picking dates to compare. Given that we all know what were the good periods and the bad periods, it would be easy for any of us to pick dates that will show Ohio to be good, or dates which show Ohio to be bad.

Picking "30 years" conveniently omits most of the bad years, and picking, say 18 years is even better. Suppose, by "coincidence", I happened to pick 2006-2023. Then the winning percentages are:
Toledo .601
Ohio .596
NIU .589
WMU .523
CMU .511
Ball St .459
Buffalo .454
BG .441
Miami .392
Kent .359
EMU .333
AKron .286

Suppose I instead, "happened" to choose beginning of time to 2005, then you get:
Miami .639
CMU .606
BG .599
WMU .560
Toledo .550
Ball State .523
Akron .512
Ohio .488
EMU .468
Buffalo .416
Kent .391

I could get even more dismal numbers if I picked, say, the 20 years between 1986-2005. If you do this, you have be careful not to conclude too much from it because, in choosing specific dates, you have predetermined the results. I suppose you could use it to compare the coaches of that period to the historical norm for the school, if you wanted to answer the question "was Solich a good coach compared to historical norms at Ohio", but again, in framing the question, and in selecting data periods, we have predetermined the answer we will get.

Not that we have an analytics department here at Bobcat Attack, but would be curious what our recruiting classes looked like 2-4 years prior out to seasons with recruiting Ohio numbers, what was our record, and just other nuggets. May need to hire interns for Bobcat Attack to research said topics.....and also figure out how many miles of Route 33 between Athens and where it meets I-70 in Columbus is below 70mph.....haha