My premise is that our current helmets all had a good decade in the 1970s and whatever status they had going in was confirmed and strengthened in some cases, and they are still viewed as helmets - Texas, OU, ND, Bama, OSU, UM, USC - those are my Blue Chips (for the moment).
To some degree, I think of this as pertaining to who would be exciting to schedule for my lesser team, and it's all of them. No matter how bad USC might be, they still carry that panache (for now). As a fan, I'd be excited to schedule Wisconsin and Penn State and teams of that ilk, but it wouldn't "fee" the same.
Some of this for me of course is because UGA didn't play anyone of note on the road for eons (1965 to about 2005 or so) outside bowls.