Buffalo's not a bad city. It gets a bad rap and can get brutally cold, but it seems safe and clean, with just enough night life (not much near campus tho) and some beautiful neighborhoods. But I never looked at New York as some recruitment hotbed. They could make a name for themselves in Western PA, but New York itself doesn't really have much of a high level high school football culture.

Agreeing with both of you. UB is probably one of if not strongest school in theAC academically (disclaim: my graduate degree is from UB), but high school football in New York State is a joke from what i saw of it (circa 2006-2013). Not a major talent producing area, with notable exceptions (iirc Gronkowski (sp?) grew up in one of the nicer Buffalo suburbs. As of 2010 or so his family was still active in the area. Seemed like nice enough people when they came to the cancer center i worked at for a charity event)

Culture is a huge advantage. FBS programs in the coal mining areas like WVU or VT seem to have that tough blue collar football culture. That is Ohio has going for it in the MAC to go along with Athens being a great college town.

Contrast that with Miami's spoiled rich kid culture. Fancy buildings but not a lot of substance. It looks like an ivy league college but isn't. The average FBS player I don't think is attracted to that type of school.

With the bigger market programs in the MAC they no doubt have resource advantages on Ohio but it also drives Ohio to continually strive for improvement and initiate more facility campaigns. Players don't pick where to play by its donor base or coaching salary but more on the facilities and culture.

There are factors for WMU, Toledo and Buffalo that place a ceiling on how far they can go. Buffalo is a pro market town. Toledo has a stigma as a mediocre rust belt town to outsiders. WMU has the directional Michigan label and is removed from locations outside the Midwest. They don't exactly have TCU or Miami Fl potential in recruiting where all the players they need are right there in a 30 mile radius. The only G5 program in the Midwest that has anything close to that is Cincinnati.

Boise State didn't have the players right on their doorstep but decent market resources. Out west though its easy to recruit players across state lines and many of those MWC universities have zero talent in their back yards so it allowed Boise to get out in front with wins and dominate recruiting. In the MAC the Michigan kids want to play at the Michigan schools and the Ohio kids want to play at the Ohio schools so you can't run away with the whole region in recruiting. Illinois and Indiana recruiting isn't as strong but the MAC has only 1 school a piece in those states to offset it.

I dunno about total ranking per school. Do you consider things like having dorms on West Green nearby compared to walking 2 miles to the stadium? What I do know is almost every time someone in the MAC builds something they go above and beyond what existing members already have.

Facilities are relative. Ohio has an IPF, football ops, weight room, therapy pools, academic center, club seats, press tower, scoreboard, videoboards. Go back to 1990 and it didn't have any of that. Are any of these facilities best in the MAC? Probably they'd rate at least as decent. That Ohio could always use more and better facilities competing in the MAC provides rational to continually fundraise for them.

That argument is harder to make if Ohio was playing in the Colonial with facilities already on a different level than the majority of schools that play football there. Ohio's program might not have the local economic base of most MAC and G5 peers but there is at least a sense that improvements have to be done anyways to stay competitive.

Probably because WVU's mascot practices open carry