Sign him!

I guess this thread has run out of steam.

Boals didn't get an extension after winning the MAC Tournament after his second year. Its not automatic that TA will get one.

With the win last night over Buffalo, Tim now has 9 career wins, surpassing Tom Lichtenberg's total of 8, and he is now tied with Cleve Bryant. Passing Brian Knorr's total of 11 is now a possibility before the end of this season.

Lichtenberg had zero resources to work with. No dedicated strength & conditioning staff, no tight ends coach, minimal recruiting budget. The job ruined his health.

No facilities back in the 80's and most of the 90's. No internet recruiting presence. Can't compare that era to today.

How did the resources he had compare to what other MAC teams had at the time?

To make this comparison work the assumptions are that OU is the same level of university with the same recruiting attractiveness under the same recruiting rules. 85 scholarship limit didn't become official until the early 90's. A few years later Toledo was the first MAC program to appear in the Top 25 in decades and it eventually helped Ohio's program under the Grobe years.

Why Ohio would regress to the 1984-1994 period doesn't make sense to me. Ohio was a good program in the two platoon era and the guilded age of athletics back in Peden's time. That 1984-1994 period is worse than what Akron is today the very worst team in the MAC. It happens to be many fans on here were at OU at that time and are in perpetual disbelief about the current state.

For the wilderness years to work Albin would need to go 1-11, be fired and then be replaced with a terrible excuse of a coach. There is an outside chance TA could drive the program into a hole but the next hire isn't going to be making High School coach money as they did in the 80's. Next coach 1 million + coordinators making 300k-400k. Its very difficult to hire lemon staff after lemon staff with that type of money.

While the board might have placed the probability of a 1984-1994 wilderness decade post Frank at 50% its actual probability is around 0.1% that Ohio would be the very worst FBS team for a decade.

There is a different variance. Back in 1985-1994 MAC schools played 11 game seasons and today half the MAC schools play 13 games counting the bowl with the division winners playing 14. More games and more home games help.

Comparing the OU offense from 1985-1994 to the bottom 1/3rd of the MAC was an exceptionally poor era.

1985 bottom 1/3 ppg (16.5), Ohio 16.5 ppg
*1986 bottom 1/3 ppg (16.6), Ohio 17.8 ppg
1987 bottom 1/3 ppg (16.4), Ohio 11.5 ppg
*1988 bottom 1/3 ppg (17.3), Ohio 17.7 ppg
1989 bottom 1/3 ppg (17.4), Ohio 17.4 ppg
1990 bottom 1/3 ppg (16.1), Ohio 14.7 ppg
1991 bottom 1/3 ppg (16.0), Ohio 16.0 ppg
1992 bottom 1/3 ppg (13.2), Ohio 13.2 ppg
1993 bottom 1/3 ppg (14.8), Ohio 12.2 ppg
1994 bottom 1/3 ppg (13.2), Ohio 7.5 ppg

The chances of finishing in the bottom 1/3 offensively 8/10 years with an average ppg about 90% of the bottom 1/3 was about 6% at that time.

Compare this to 2013-2022 where Ohio finished bottom 1/3 twice and the average ppg of the bottom 1/3 line was 24 ppg compared to 15.8 ppg.

2013 bottom 1/3 ppg (18.8), Ohio 27.4 ppg
*2014 bottom 1/3 ppg (22.3), Ohio 20.5 ppg
2015 bottom 1/3 ppg (23.1), Ohio 27.5 ppg
2016 bottom 1/3 ppg (24.8), Ohio 26.3 ppg
2017 bottom 1/3 ppg (25.3), Ohio 39.1 ppg
2018 bottom 1/3 ppg (23.9), Ohio 40.1 ppg
2019 bottom 1/3 ppg (24.1), Ohio 34.3 ppg
2020 bottom 1/3 ppg (28.7), Ohio 34.3 ppg
*2021 bottom 1/3 ppg (24.1), Ohio 22.6 ppg
2022 bottom 1/3 ppg (24.8), Ohio 33.4 ppg

The point you have on facilities and technology something MAC and G5 programs have can be thought of all things equal are in Ohio's case equalizers when from 1985-1994 it was at the bottom of the MAC and many levels below what other conferences had at the time. 6-6 in 2014 and 3-9 in 2021 have more wins than the 1985-1994 wilderness era in part because of more games.

Ohio averaged 14.45 ppg over a decade in 1985-1994. That is not going happen again in my lifetime.

I am saying a 1985-1995 wilderness campaign where Ohio averages 14.5 ppg and averages 5 FBS wins a year was a statistical anomaly (6% chance in that era). What made it more likely for Ohio was at that time the facilities were a full standard deviation below the MAC and two standard deviations below the average FBS team (only had 105 teams so 52-53 was the middle).

Today the Ohio facilities are more equitable with MAC peers if not better in some respects so the program should stay closer to the mean and with FBS as a whole now 130 team facilities are behind by 1 standard deviation if that. The school isn't as remote as it was 40 years ago with the new highways and three times the restaurants. TV presence is at the Mountain West level.

Having a couple of extra games helps. Having six games at home helps. Akron is in the bottom of the MAC because it can't get the players nor the students. UMass doesn't have talent in its backyard. Ohio's within 2-3 hours of Cincy, Dayton, Columbus, Cleveland and can attract players across the state like it does with students. Better weather than Akron and UMass.

I though the question a lot of alums had years ago is why doesn't Ohio as a top MAC university have a good MAC football program and now it has one commensurate with the intangibles of a top college town. The last decade is the new normal, not back to the 1985-1994 era.

My first reaction is, "Monroe would be proud." Not of the content of this thread but its geometric shape.

In terms of content, I don't think you've proven at all that OHIO could never return to the Wildnerness years. Fortunately, it appears that Albin is turning out to be a better coach than many of us feared last year. Akron, by the way, has great facilities and is in the hot bed of Ohio high school football, with many great players in their own backyard. However, they are still going through a Wilderness Campaign.

Akron's last five years
2018 4-8
2019 0-12
2020 1-5
2021 2-10
2022 1-8 (and counting)

This Cleve and PapaL ball if I ever saw it.

Their new coach may pull them out of it, so they may rebound more quickly than OHIO did hiring two bad coaches back to back, but it's not a given. Time will tell. To say that it's not possible for this kind of record to happend again at OHIO is just nonsensical.

But in the 80s our facilities were so poor that a truly top tier MAC recruit would have had to be stupid to sign with Ohio.

And today, where a truly top recruit can make money playing for other schools, they also have reasons to go elsewhere.