For whatever reason, I still own a copy of Athlon's 2004 I-A Football Preview. I skimmed it last night as I internalized yesterday's Missouri State game. While parts of it are amusing to read (how soon will Bill Callahan compete for national championships at Nebraska?), I was intrigued by a section where the writers posed various questions to comtemporary head coaches, such as "which coach do you try to emulate?" (the majority answer of "Joe Paterno" aged pretty poorly, too bad we can't make fun of certain people because the coaches were allowed to remain anonymous), but one question caught my eye because I find it personally relevant:

"Are there programs you just can't win at?"

This question received the most diverse answers in the column. Anyone who has read anything I have posted on here knows my answer to this. I just found it intriguing that head coaches of major programs would agree.

To expand the scope of this thread, if you were a credible booster of a Missouri State or Indiana (a program called out by name by a coach in the article as being impossible to win at), what do you think would need to be done to raise programs like this to national competitiveness? Would it be possible, or how realistic would it be?