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Oklahoma's .353 is sort of a special case.

Gary Gibbs succeeded Barry Switzer.  He had played for Switzer and was a coach for him at OU.  He righted the ship, which Switzer left under probation.  And he had a decent record (44-23-2, .652), but he was fired because he went 2-15-1 against Texas, Nebraska, and Colorado.  Then Howard Schellenberger was hired, and fired after one year (5-5-1, .500).  At that point, OU hired  John Blake, who had played at OU under Barry Switzer, was then coaching for Switzer at Dallas, and was hired on Switzer's recommendation.  (I believe he was dismissed from Dallas right before getting hired at OU.  He had complained to Switzer that Troy Aikman was a racist who treated his black teammates differently than he did his white teammates.  The black players all supported Aikman against Blake.)  The idea was that he was a great recruiter, and if he would hire a good OC and DC, he could let them make the major decisions.  Then when it was immediately apparent that he was going to fail despite the good coordinators' work, firing him got tied up with the racial angle.  So he got three years to prove himself incompetent (12-22, .353).  On the way out the door, he instigated racial unrest within the program that caused several black players to quit, and he destroyed all the recruiting files so that Bob Stoops would have to start from scratch.

He then went on to be a dirty recruiter, as I'm sure he was at OU, for Mississippi State, Nebraska and North Carolina.  He helped get North Carolina on probation for recruiting violations, costing Butch Davis (his H.S. coach and science teacher at Sand Springs, OK) his job with the Tarheels in the process.

I'm sure there are comparable examples at other schools.  Sometimes programs just put up with a failing coach, or give him more time to fail, because of extenuating circumstances.

That's an interesting way of looking at it.

Here's another way.  I see OU and Texas as somewhat analogous to Ohio State and Michigan.  The "blue-bloodedness" of Texas and Michigan goes back further than it does with OU and Ohio State, with OU and Ohio State having more success recently.

Not a perfect analogy by any means.  Ohio State and Texas are both located in their respective state capitals, while Michigan and OU are located in college towns, for example.

Austin, while "only" the 4th-largest city in Texas, is still a very large city, the 11th-largest in the country.  Not that it matters to my point in my previous post.

OU and UT have locked in similar OOC schedules for the next 15 years or so.

OU plays home-and-home series vs. Tennessee, LSU, Bama, Georgia, Michigan, and Clemson, plus 2 home-and-home series with Nebraska.

UT plays LSU and Arkansas (2nd game of home-and-home series, I think), home-and-home series vs. Bama, Michigan, Ohio State, Georgia, Florida, and Arizona State.

Whether this has anything to do with future realignment issues, I have no clue.

I mean, A&M was a conference game, so they just traded that for TCU basically. It seems like Texas was good not great with UCLA/OSU series, plus old SWC games with Arkansas and sometimes TCU, some North Carolina, Stanford NC State and I guess a Rutgers.

Since losing A&M, it’s Cal, UCLA, ND neutral, Maryland and USC. So sorta a push.

Georgia has usually gone strong, at least since Richt arrived (it’s a little less clear in the 3 non-conf game era). Lot of Clemson’s, Good Boise, Ok State. Since Tech’s last Top-10 team, you had Clemson, UNC (neutral), ND, and two years with no marquee name.

UCLA has a nice stadium. 4 hours away and all that.

You know LA better than me, but my impression is that the alumni base and local fans have been strong enough to support the Trojans throughout their history. But it's true, there is more to compete with in LA than in Tuscaloosa.

Ehhh, Columbus is the largest city in Ohio. 

It is, but that is somewhat misleading when you look at metro areas.  Cleveland is the largest there, followed by Cincy, then Columbus.