It appears that you may not realize that you are reinforcing his point.
I remember being at a men's hoops game at the civic center (I believe early January 1985) when we had just gotten our backsides handed to us at Georgetown (lost by ~ 45 points), listening to other fans tell me that Perno wasn't the problem, that no coach could win here against schools like Georgetown, St John's, Syracuse, Nova, BC, how we needed to accept that playing at level similar to the Yankee conference, with the other New England schools was where we belonged and that we were lucky to have someone who was as important to the school's history as Perno coaching the team.
Those people thought I was wrong when I said that the right coach could have us competing with the better schools in the conference and accomplishing close to what they could accomplish. The truth is I was wrong. After bringing in the right coach we were able to accomplish far more than the better schools in the conference could dream of.
I don't know if the right coach in football can have us doing what Fickell (after a succession of good hires) has Cincinnati doing but I am very confident that we can find a coach who can take us further than RE v1.0 took us.