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I don't disagree with all of that, but at the same time, to a person who grew up post-Bo in the southern US, Schembechler seems revered like a multi-NC-winning HC.  When I got old enough to look him up, his records were always great, but he was sort of a loser, in terms of winning the big one.

If his career was recent, he'd be another John Cooper or whoever. 

Yes and no.  

@ELA once said that Bo and Gene Keady were both guys that would be on a hypothetical "Mount Rushmore" of Big Ten coaches due to their phenomenal in-conference and regular season success but whose national perception is substantially dimmer because of their postseason struggles.  I think that sums it up pretty well.  

Schembechler went 143-24-3 (.8500) in Big Ten games and 194-48-5 (.7955) overall.  That is actually slightly better than Woody who went 152-37-7 (.7934) in league games and 205-61-10 (.7609) overall.  

Where Hayes crushes Schembechler is in bowls, particularly the Rose Bowl and consequently NC's.  Woody was 4-4 in Rosebowls and 5-6 in Bowls overall while Bo was 2-8 and 5-12 in Rosebowls and bowls overall respectively.  Woody's numbers are about what you would expect (close to .500) while Bo's are just dreadful.  However, to Bo's credit three of Woody's wins came before Bo got to Ann Arbor.  After Bo's arrival, Woody was just 1-4 in Rosebowls and 2-6 in bowls overall.  

Personally, I think a big part of both of their post-1968 bowl struggles had to do with the intensity of their rivalry with each other.  THE GAME became SO BIG that everything after it felt anti-climactic and unimportant by comparison.  

Clemson is an interesting potential "Blue Blood" program.  I'd argue they are not today because of history, but when might they become one?  They clearly are a dominating program now.  If they become a fixture in the playoffs over the next decade and win say 3 NCs, do they start to edge into the discussion, or does being a BB inherently require a long history of success?

Here are decades over .750 for all of these teams:

• 46 OU
• 43 tOSU
• 39 Bama
• 38 UNL
• 34 TX
• 34 M
• 32 ND
• 31 TN
• 26 PSU
• 23 Miami
• 22 USC
• 19 FSU
• 12 LSU
• 11 UF
• 10 Clemson

Clemson's 10 decades over .750 were:

• 78-87
• 80-89
• 81-90
• 82-91
• 83-92
• 84-93
• 86-95
• 08-17
• 09-18
• 10-19

I think .750 for a decade is "elite".  Clemson has two such peaks, the late-70's to early 90's and the current period.  All of the "true" helmets have at least twice as many .750+ decades as the Tigers and most of them have three or four times as many.  Clemson isn't a "helmet" to me because they don't have enough history of success to warrant that status.  They have been phenomenal of late but that isn't the same thing as being a long-term blue-blood.  If Dabo stays another decade or 15 years and keeps them at a high level they'll be up around FSU/USC/Miami/PSU's level in this category and that is more like it.  

First, the 60's are a difficult time to analyze because from 1962-1967 the AP Poll (one of my favorite metrics normally) only included 10 teams. 

It is interesting to me that you considered Michigan elite starting circa 1967 because at that time and leading up to it:
1967:  Michigan was not ranked in any AP Poll and finished 4-6
1966:  Michigan was ranked 9th and 8th respectively in the first two polls then lost three straight and never got back, finishing 6-4
1965:  Michigan was ranked 4th, 4th, and 7th in the first three polls then lost four straight and never got back, finishing 4-6
1964:  Michigan was unranked in the preseason and again in one poll (immediately after their loss to PU) but other than that they were ranked all year finishing 9-1 and #4 with a RB win over Oregon State
1963:  Michigan was not ranked in any AP Poll and finished 3-4-2
1962:  Michigan was not ranked in any AP Poll and finished 2-7
1961:  Michigan was ranked in a couple early polls and received votes in the final (pre-bowl) poll.  They finished 6-3
1960:  Michigan was not ranked in any AP Poll and finished 5-4
1959:  Michigan was not ranked in any AP Poll and finished 4-5
1958:  Michigan was ranked (barely, high-teens) in three early polls but finished 2-6-1

So in the decade prior to when you were first aware of the national picture, Michigan had been nationally relevant once.  If you go back even further, Michigan's RB winning 9-1/#4 season in 1964 was their only season with less than two losses between their undefeated season in 1948 and Bo's second year of 1970.  Ie, from 1949-1969 Michigan was nationally relevant in one out of 21 years. 

It is interesting that Michigan's improvement actually started in 1968 (Bump Elliott's last year).  In 1968 Michigan was ranked almost all year peaking at #4 in the 11/11 and 11/18 polls before getting drilled 50-14 by #2 Ohio State on 11/23.  Still, they finished 8-2 and #12. 

In 1969 the Wolverines were:

• Unranked preseason*
• got into the Poll after a couple early wins (Vandy, Washington)
• fell back out after a bad home loss to #9 Mizzou
• got back in after a win over #9 Purdue on 10/11
• fell back out after a loss to unranked MSU on 10/18
• got back in and climbed to #12 with wins over MN, UW, IL, and IA (all finished .500 or worse)
• jumped to #7 with a win over #1 Ohio State
• lost the RB and finished 8-3 and #9

Then Michigan became almost super-elite.  From 1970-2007 they were:

• #1 in AP Poll appearances with 560 (91.7% out of 611). 
• #2 in AP top-10 appearances with 356 (58.3% out of 611). 
• #3 in AP top-5 appearances with 207 (33.9% out of 611). 

So for the 38 seasons from 1970-2007 the Wolverines were ranked in about 9-out-of-10 polls, top-10 in about 3-out-of-5 polls, and top-5 in about 1-out-of-three polls. 

Comparison, from 1949-1967 they were:

• #13 in AP Poll appearances with 82 (36.8% out of 223)
• #16 (tied with UMD) in AP top-10 appearances with 51 (22.9% of 223)
• #17 (tied with Ark and ILL) in AP top-5 appearances with 24 (10.8% out of 223)

Those figures from 1949-1967 show how "not elite" they were. 

*Above I noted that the Wolverines were unranked to start the 1969 season.  I think this demonstrates that they were NOT really a helmet at that time.  They got as high as #4 in 1968 and finished #12.  Helmet teams that get as high as #4 and finish #12 ALWAYS start the next season ranked.  Michigan didn't because they weren't.

It's not the case that I considered Michigan elite in 1967, but that by the time "Michigan" impinged on my consciousness, they were at least climbing toward that status.
The first time I really looked at the polls was at the end of the '67 season, in which #3 OU beat #2 Tennessee in the Orange Bowl.  The polls that year were all pre-bowl, so I was wondering how OU would have been ranked had their been polling after the bowl games.  It did not make any impact on me that Michigan was not only not among the 10 ranked teams, but had finished 4-6.
But the next year Michigan was good, and starting in '71 Michigan and Ohio State played in a string of games in which it seemed like the first team to score 13 points was going to win.  Then OU played Michigan (who had lost to Ohio State 21-14) in the Orange Bowl after the '75 season.  (I was disappointed that Michigan wore white pants in that game.)  Without going back and examining the history, and even while I was aware that Michigan State had played Notre Dame to a 10-10 tie in 1966's GOTC, it just seemed like it was the norm that Michigan and Ohio State always played in the last game of the season for the Big Ten championship, and that the score in that game was likely to be something like 13-10.
Maybe the fact that my fraternity got a visit from our national director, a Michigan Man who taught us "I Want to Go Back to Michigan," and that the Pride of Oklahoma played "Let's Go Blue" (renamed "Go Big Red") the next season after that Orange Bowl matchup, made me think that Michigan was a perennial top-10 program.
Those decades of Michigan futility since Fritz Crisler were before I started paying attention.
If Michigan was not a helmet team in 1969, have the Wolverines done enough since then to earn helmet status?  Was Bo's run great enough, even without an MNC?  Does the one split national championship in the 1990s do it?

Their cycles somewhat correlate, a bit.  The Vols may be an 8-4 kind of program going forward, in most years.  They should be 10-2 on occasion and 6-6 on occasion.  The are locked with Alabama, and of course UGA/UF, and they have struggled with UK of late, not to mention an OOC game of possible note.

It seems like Tennessee "should" be at least as good as Auburn is.  Auburn, Alabama, has less cachet than Knoxville, Tennessee, does.

I don't think there's any "natural" reason for Oklahoma to be as good as it is.  Norman is not an 18-year-old's idea of Fun City, and Oklahoma is not a large population state.  Texas is next door, but Texas contains 5 P5 programs plus a gazillion smaller colleges plus other P5 and G5 neighbors (more of the former since A&M bolted to the SEC) fishing those same waters.

Michigan's dearth of recent NC's creates an interesting argument.  However, I think that ranking teams by NC's doesn't give enough of a picture.  Being a Helmet isn't just about winning NC's.  Obviously that is the goal for all of our teams, every year, but to rank teams solely by NC's creates a false dichotomy in which every season has only two possible end results:

• A NC, or
• Failure. 

I get the argument that "second is the first loser" and all that but the reality is that there is a HUMONGOUS difference between losing the CFPCG and going 0-12.  Looking at last year:

• LSU was the best and a little better than
• Clemson was 2nd best and a little better than
• Ohio State was next and better than
• Oklahoma
• etc
• etc

Michigan is clearly a helmet in spite of their only having one split NC in the last 70 years because Bo and his handpicked successors had them at a consistently elite level for ~40 years and when you add that to their "pre-historic" success in the early 1930's and before, they are a blueblood . . . at least for now. 

On the subject of winning NC's as it relates to "helmet status", I think it is a lot more important for schools trying to obtain helmet status than it is for schools trying to maintain helmet status.  My view is that maintaining helmet status requires being "relevant".  That doesn't mean that you have to win NC's, it just means that you have to be in the conversation.  Obtaining helmet status requires hardware.  So, for example, if Clemson and Michigan played in next year's CFPCG the actual result of the game would matter to Clemson's helmet status but it wouldn't matter to Michigan's.  Clemson would need the win because they aren't a helmet yet and they need more hardware to get there.  Michigan wouldn't need the win because they already are a helmet so all they need to maintain that is to be "relevant" and playing in the NCG is obvious evidence of relevance.

I don't disagree with that.  I just tossed out the "Is Michigan still a helmet?" question to see your thoughts on it.
Are some of the programs that Stewart Mandel has as "Kings" not yet helmets?  And are some of those he has dropped to "Barons" still helmets?
Clemson and Nebraska would be two programs as examples.

It does seem as if winning the NC is "it" now for major programs.  I think "it" is winning your conference and hopefully a major bowl game.