https://www.espn.com/college-football/insider/story/_/id/...

G5 schools were broken down into five tiers. Ohio was put in the third tier, which was described as "some resource or location limitations but enough to make bowl games consistently and challenge for conference titles; a restricted but decent recruiting pool of regional or national prospects; a rare New Year's Six appearance is the ceiling; not a realistic candidate for Power 5 expansion."

Sounds accurate. Half of the MAC is in the third tier. Aside from Ohio, there is Central Michigan, Miami, Northern Illinois, Toledo and Western Western Michigan. The fourth tier includes just Bowling Green and Buffalo. The bottom tier is Akron, Ball State, Eastern Michigan and Kent State.

The top tier included only Boise State, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF. The second tier was a little bigger with BYU, Memphis, Navy, San Diego State, SMU, South Florida and Temple.

The third tier is big and includes Air Force, Appalachian State, Arkansas State, Central Michigan, Colorado State, East Carolina, Florida Atlantic, Fresno State, Georgia Southern, Louisiana, Louisiana Tech, Marshall, Miami (Ohio), Northern Illinois, North Texas, Ohio, Southern Miss, Toledo, Western Michigan and Wyoming.

The fourth tier also is pretty big and includes Army, Bowling Green, Buffalo, Charlotte, Florida International, Georgia State, Hawaii, Liberty, Middle Tennessee, Nevada, New Mexico, Old Dominion, Troy, Tulane, Tulsa, UAB, UConn, UNLV, Utah State and Western Kentucky.

Finally, the fifth tier is Akron, Ball State, Coastal Carolina, Eastern Michigan, Kent State, Louisiana-Monroe, New Mexico State, Rice, San Jose State, South Alabama, Texas State, UMass, UTEP and UTSA.

I’ll offer that the biggest “long-term advancement to rock bottom” school on the whole list is Rice. Granted they didn’t have much success in it but they were a member of the old Southwest Conference before it went out of business. If was considered a top conference. Now the Owls are considered “Tier 5” for this story. Great school but must be tough to be reminded how they are perceived in athletics, particularly for their long time hard-core fans.

I think some of the other Tier 2 teams, in addition to Temple, and whether they are deserving, can be debated too.

I know that the MAC title still eludes Frank, but I think Ohio was in the 4th tier at best, really close to 5th, prior to his arrival.

Agreed on Buffalo. They were a bottom feeder when I was at Ohio in football and basketball, but, if I am being fair, they've really grown their programs and profile in the past 15 years.

Regarding BYU, I'd be curious to hear some thoughts from their powers that be on their decision to go independent in football and into the WCC for other sports. Now that they've been in for a few years, has everything materialized like they had hoped? I'd think they are second only to Notre Dame as far as having a national fan base?

The front end of their 2019 schedule had a good mix of P5 opponents, and they notched wins over Tennessee and USC. But they also had to add in some MAC opponents, Mountain West, and UMass and Liberty (as well as FCS (Idaho State), but a large chunk of D1 does that). I'm sure you can't be too picky when you are an indy, but is the quality better than when they were in the MWC?

It had to have been tier 5 when Solich took over. There were only a couple of programs that you could make a case for being worse. Bad location, subpar facilities at the time and a terrible tradition.

They have two general weaknesses in their schedule. First, even though they schedule several "P"s each year, they don't play teams that usually wind up in the national championship mix. They have just one or two teams like that in their future schedules (Oregon in 2022, maybe Baylor in '21 and '22) and had only three such games in the last five years (Wis twice; LSU once). Most of the "P"s they play are mid-to-lower tier in their conferences. Second, they play a 1AA school every year. G5 independents can't afford to do that and get the ranking needed for a major bowl game. They just don't have the kind of schedules that attract attention for an independent.