No.

If we join the ACC, the Convo will be perfect size.

The problem OHIO has attracting students has to do with location. Given the fact the school is in the most remote part of the state I would say we are doing fairly well with freshman distributed evenly across the 88 counties of Ohio. Cincinnati and Ohio State benefit from a huge local population to draw on. Miami is a safety school for students considering the top private schools in the Midwest. I've heard that the University of Illinois is hard to get into in-state so suburban Chicago kids often look at IU or Miami as backups. Ohio is 8 hours from Chicago and 8 hours on average from the East Coast. In Ohio location is less of an issue and the advantage of in-state tuition is there. There is nothing the school can do about it. The campus is top notch. Program offerings are comprehensive as you would expect at a major university. The Ohio brand is a very good brand as the state name of the 7th most populated state. Getting confused with Ohio State isn't necessarily a bad thing as it happens a lot to Michigan/Michigan St and University of California schools. Its usually assumed that the schools with the state in their name are of comparable quality. The University of Cincinnati sounds like you picked up your degree at a local college not a major state university. Ohio University has always been a best buy and an excellent deal for that student without the 30 ACT that wants to attend a quality public university. I have a cousins who are attending Alabama (interior design) and LSU (law) from out of state I guess because those schools have big football but if you are doing something more specialized like journalism or engineering I'd rather have a Midwestern state school name on there. Usually its the students who choose professional programs though stay in state and its the 28 ACT English major types that are racing out to attend public schools in other states placing demand on those schools in-state admissions. 

A story from 1979.  One if not my best long time friend, drove with his parents from NJ to OU in the spring of 1979 to check out OU.  He wanted to major in journalism.  The suggested route by the university had him coming across 70 and down 93 and 13 from Zanesville.  They got to Corning and were about ready to turn back.  Fortunately they made it and of course he enrolled, became an RA , got a degree and was accepted into the sports ad program and is now one of the most sought after entertainment execs in the industry. 

What's the point?  In less than two months any student coming to visit OU or enroll at OU will be able to travel a four lane highway all the way into town whether they come from the north, south, east or west.  I truly believe this will make a huge difference in people's perception of the remoteness or isolation of Athens.

McDavis's options are pretty limited for upgrading the school. Graduate programs are controlled by the state and its a hard fight to get additional PhD programs considered. Its a very anti-competitive way of doing business for the state. The amount of H.S. students in Ohio is in decline making it more challenging to fill out that high achieving class you wish for. The school under his watch has added a nursing program to handle demand and now offers online degree completion programs. The big X factor is in fundraising and that is one area where Ohio is not constrained or impeded by the state legislature. If some of that money could be directed toward enhancing the research profile and turn Athens County into a tech corridor.

 http://www.ohio.edu/campaign/

1:28 is accurate in that I do that 6 times a month (up and back counted as 2)..  My guess is that on an average day, the bypass will take 5 to 7 minutes off of that.  I'll let you know as soon as it is opened.

That said, in 1979 it wasn't so much the time it took to get here but the observational comments as to "where in the heck are we.?"

And perhaps even more when this goes into effect:

http://www.toledoblade.com/State/2013/06/11/70-mph-limits-urged-for-more-Ohio-highways.html

70 mph speed limits for all rural divided highways, not just interstates, meaning much of 33 could go up to 70.

In the summer of 1962 Ohio was hosting Buckeye Boys State.  I was a delegate from my high school in Shelby in north central Ohio.  A local American Legion member offered to drive our 4-student delegation to Athens.  He looked at a road map and saw that if he drove east toward Ashland he could pick up Rt. 13 which would take us south to Athens.  Yikes!  What an ordeal.  It must have taken nearly 5 hours to get from Shelby to Athens via Ashland and Rt. 13.  Amazingly, three of the four of us wound up going to Ohio.  

But the ACC won't be attracted by a half empty stadium. The ACC/Big XII ships have sailed. Making decisions with those goals in mind is pointless. Over the last two years, the landscape of college athletics has shifted drastically and conferences have realigned and grown, and Ohio's name hasn't been mentioned once. We're not even on the ACC/Big XII radar, and that has nothing to do with our stadium.

If SMU, Memphis, Tulane, Tulsa, San Diego State, etc. are still stuck in their obscure leagues, there is little hope for a MAC member to get into a P5 league. It's not even a pipe dream at this point.

Perhaps the fans that remain are having more fun, but there seem to be less of them.

Average attendance at home games, by year:
2014 (1-10) 12,886
2015 (4-8) 11,847
2016 (9-4) 13,487
2017 (4-8) 10,533 last year in FBS
Four years of FBS - Average=12,157
Average in winning years = 13,487
Average in losing years = 11,755

FCS years
2018 (4-7 )11,280 (4-7)
2019 (5-7) 6,885
2020 covid year
2021 (4-7) 5,478
2022 (7-5) 8,892
2023 (9-3, so far) 11,160
Five years of FCS - Average = 8,046 -34%
Average in losing years = 7,881 -33%
Average in winning years = 10,026 -26%

It took a year for attendance to drop, but then it dropped hard. This year attendance, with them in the FCS playoffs, it is still not quite back to their FBS level. It will be interesting to see where it goes from here.