I think it's telling that at least two MAC coaches -- Martin at Fiami and Loefler at BG -- want their programs to emulate ours. A far cry from 15 years ago.
Exactly. For those of us who have followed Ohio football well before Frank came here, it’s still hard to comprehend at times the level Ohio has risen to - and stayed - since his arrival. I still remember when 0-10 Akron and 0-10 Ohio played in the “Toilet Bowl,” a game Ohio ended up losing to finish winless on the season like it was yesterday. And now here we are. It’s why I don’t lose any sleep over not winning a MACC.
I was enrolled when this game was played. During that season I started doing computer rankings on FBS Football. One ranking is a strength of record calculation and the other is a predictive algorithm to predict scores of future or hypothetical match-ups. I did this mostly due to the Penn St./Nebraska poll controversy rather than to prove to myself just how bad OUr team was. Penn St. comes out barely ahead in both of my metrics even though the finished just behind in both polls.
At any rate, I eventually ran the metrics on all FBS seasons since its origin in 1978. Ironically, the team at my school when I started the computation is the team that it thinks has the all-time worst strength of record. The reason that I bring this up is maybe someone will find it somewhat interesting that will no longer be the case if we beat Akron next week. That is unless the MAC has a nice bowl season which would raise the system's opinion of Akron's schedule.