Wake was nearly a consensus No. 65, and that's not a good thing. It's not in a terribly difficult league, and yet the academically stringent private school colloquially known as "Work Forest" is all but invisible -- to recruits and the general public -- in its state and region, let alone nationally. Put it this way: When we asked a room of several assistant coaches which program they thought would be last in our polling, they didn't respond with Wake -- because they had forgotten that Wake was a Power 5 school. Really, history just might show that Jim Grobe, who was 77-82 in 13 seasons and took the Deacons to five bowl games (including the BCS's Orange Bowl in '06), was more of a miracle worker than anyone truly recognized at the time.

1. Iowa State After playing a game in Ames last season, a coach texted me. He'd never been there before and simply could not believe how stark and isolated the landscape was. The legends were all true, he said. And that was prior to winter's icy grip on the Corn Belt. So a coach fights more than just perception with this job. There's a certain reality to your Iowa-bound island. How do you convince yourself to go there, and then somehow get high school prospects to follow? It's one of the toughest sales pitches in the sport. In the 2015 recruiting class, Iowa State did sign four players from Texas and Florida, plus three more from Georgia and two from California. But where do you think ISU is on the college pecking order in those talent-rich states? Not high. The Cyclones have signed one ESPN 300 prospect in the history of the rankings. It all puts a big-time onus on development and mining jucos. Even then, it is incredibly difficult in the Big 12 to compete with the Texas and Oklahoma schools.

   1. Kansas General apathy, coaches say, is why Kansas sinks this low. The fan base turns its attention to hoops midway through the season, unlike every other school in the Big 12. At best, football is a supplement to whatever's happening inside Phog. At worst (otherwise known as the recent norm) it's forgotten by Halloween. The administration is vowing a renewed commitment to resources and support -- but we'll see how much first-time coach David Beaty really does receive. Beaty's hire, at least, was a departure from a retread such as Charlie Weis or a set-up-to-fail up-and-comer such as Turner Gill. It showed some inspiration and a desire to find someone who really does want to be at KU. (Beaty was a former Jayhawks assistant, and 2014 interim coach Clint Bowen was retained as DC.) Despite its placement in these rankings, there's some hope in Lawrence. Kansas City, about a half-hour away, isn't a recruiting hotbed, but there are some players there. And being near a major metro area is a plus that many of the programs in these bottom tiers cannot boast.
   2. Washington State Pullman has natural beauty that Ames does not, but it has the same isolation -- and then some -- especially when considering the vastness of the Pac-12. Getting from Seattle to the Palouse is laborious. Los Angeles feels worlds away, and it might as well be. Yet Wazzu has to lean hard on California-based recruits, breaking into a crowded state with a widely unfamiliar product and faraway location. Those who have worked there talk about how scenic it is -- and also how desolate it really can feel. If you're going out to eat, they say, you're likely driving across the state line to Moscow, Idaho. There's nothing wrong with Moscow, Idaho, but it tells you how little there is in Pullman, Washington. There is some record of success, when Mike Price twice took the Cougars to the Rose Bowl, but the league has significantly grown and deepened in the decade-plus since the school's 2002 appearance in Pasadena. It's a challenge that Mike Leach, who managed well in Lubbock, Texas, is finding to be a struggle.

Purdue Boilermakers Joe Robbins/Getty Images Purdue may have the World's Largest Drum, but it's missing other notable draws for coaches. Tier 9: The next-worst Not mired in a pit of despair, but looking over the edge of the cliff. A number of "academic" institutions -- and the associated hurdles -- included here.

1. Purdue It's looking more and more like Joe Tiller was an even bigger outlier than Grobe. That's thematic among these bottom-dwellers: A coach is able to establish success for a nice stretch, but it proves unsustainable once he's gone. Tiller had nine winning seasons in 12 years, including the 2000 Big Ten title and Rose Bowl bid. The Boilermakers have had four losing seasons in the six years since Tiller retired. Third-year coach Darrell Hazell has labored, unsuccessfully so far, to energize West Lafayette about its college team. (His 1-11 and 3-9 seasons haven't helped matters.) It's an hour from Indy and 90 minutes from Chicago, but it feels farther from both. It's still an engineering school in a blue-collar Indiana town. Texas was once a popular Purdue pipeline (it's the state from which the Boilers plucked Drew Brees). When that dried up, so did the program's success. It needs to either get back into Texas or find a new promised land of future Boilers.

2. (tie) Indiana Purdue and Indiana often get lumped together, so it's probably not all that surprising to see them adjacent to one another. What might be surprising, however, is that Purdue -- because of Tiller's run -- isn't listed ahead of IU. The Hoosiers, spanning six coaches, have had just one winning season since 1995 (7-6 in 2007). So any coach taking the job had better include regular résumé-updating as part of his duties, because it's difficult to stay more than a handful of seasons at that clip. Kevin Wilson's teams have won four, five and four games the past three seasons, and that actually isn't horrific in recent lore -- which is why he'll get at least a fifth season. (The AD has been supportive, so a new coach would appreciate that.) Bloomington is a cool college town, but there isn't a whole lot to suggest football is going to rival basketball there anytime soon. And that's even considering some pretty lean times in the past decade or so for the school's hoops team.

3. (tie) Vanderbilt Nashville is the best city in the SEC. And the school isn't shoved off in some suburban corner of town; it's less than a mile from the heart of everything, and West End is a bustling area of activity. Additionally, Vanderbilt is the best academic institution in the SEC, not that that doesn't come with football hurdles, as we've seen and will see with elite-level schools for education. All that said, the program is so, so far behind when it comes to its brethren. It took James Franklin's recent one-part televangelist, one-part ShamWow guy act to even take Vandy to the precipice of success (two nine-win seasons). Once he left, 1980s-era doormat Vanderbilt reappeared. It begs the question: Does Franklin's 24-15 record in three seasons signal the high-water mark, as good as good can get, for a program that has struggled to dogpaddle in its conference? Not unlike Wake Forest, it's a great university miscast in a league with more athletic-minded members -- and that's just that much truer in the SEC than the ACC. Of course, those leagues do not mind keeping around the private schools to boost a certain academic image.

4. Duke Thanks to David Cutcliffe's lobbying of the school's administration to get serious about football spending, Duke has made some strides in the past few years. (A relatively new indoor facility is an illustration.) But imagining a post-Cut world, if the job came open tomorrow, Duke also has the appearance of a school that would sink right back where it was before him. Duke is essentially Wake on HGH. It's fighting many of those same battles, admissions most notably. One difference is that its basketball team has made it athletically visible. Cutcliffe has demonstrated precisely the model of how you have to win there: by playing smarter than the opponent and by developing under-the-radar kids. Unfortunately, that isn't a terribly successful model for sustainability -- even in the so-so ACC -- when FSU is unloading a dump truck of new five-stars every year.

5. Syracuse As one coach said: "The weather is miserable, and that dome ..." Yes, that dome. The Carrier Dome hasn't exactly aged like a fine Bordeaux, we'll say. The facility, and the school's upstate New York isolation, has made for a somewhat ragged fit in its new conference. It strains the accuracy of the name "Atlantic Coast Conference," really. The state might touch the water, but Syracuse says neither Atlantic nor Coastal. "We all know why they're here," the coach said, referring to the ACC's desire to maintain its basketball reputation. The school and city are currently trying to figure out options for the dome, whether to renovate or build something new. Either way, it's much-needed for the program's profile. I recall school officials talking last summer about how difficult it had been to get higher-end teams in the ACC (and Notre Dame) to actually play in Syracuse; better opponents want a neutral-site game in the Meadowlands, they said. As for the weather, well, there isn't much that can be done about that one. At least the football season is over before the gray of dirty snow season hits.

6. (tie) Boston College (Cont.)