The single greatest predictor of success in college football is coaching. And talent, and money, and location, and tradition, and like a thousand other things. Okay, fine. It all plays into it. But absent everything else but even just a little talent, good coaching can take a basement dweller to a real threat within a few seasons.
It's something that took the Big Ten as a whole a long time to figure out. The Ohio States of the world are going to be successful, generally, even with average coaching because of every other advantage that their program has.