Rodriquez was playing weak schedules. He was the only coach that reached that 8–9-win threshold you threw out. Look at the 2005 schedule it was a joke. In that era there was about 3-4 games that you could say we had a chance of losing. Today there is about 4 games where you could say we would win for sure. There maybe four power conferences and not six but there are more members in that four then there were in those six. The only teams currently not a member of the power 4 who were power 6 members are Uconn , USF, Wash state and Oregon State but you replace them with Smu, Ucf, Houston, Byu and Cincinatti. The majority of recruits do not want to play in the Big 12 or Acc. They want to go to the Big 10 and Sec where the money is. These conferences make double in tv revenue. There NiL capabilities are far superior. It's the reason you see significant improvement in some of these middle of the pack programs in these conferences. I agree we shouldn't be getting throttled by some of the teams we play but if your program is at the bottom of the big 12 in NIL like some of the podcasts have said on quite few occasions then you should expect it. The big 12 is the best paycheck we can get at the moment but after that it's not a good situation for us. You have to be playing games in your recruiting footprint and that's not currently happening. When Rod had the success, you speak of was Wvu playing in middle America? or was it playing on the east coast and Florida where we belong.