re: 1 top 5 finish in last 6 years and 1 BCS bowl appearance

Go back a few years and look at the class rankings for USC from about 08-10 and tell me what those teams won. Coaching is very important, you just discounted a good example in support of this point in Stanford. If you just look at a larger sample than this year you'll see that ND, Oregon, Stanford, and Ok St have all made or come very close to making National Championship games without having several elite classes in a row. 95% is just silly, I would say more like 60-70%. Just look at LSU, our offensive coaching was terrible and prevented us from winning numerous games from 08-12.