I'm just being realistic here... You have Alabama, Georgia, and tOSU at the top tier. Michigan's getting close as well with those last two excellent years.
We were a very good team, being a small notch below the excellent teams in Brian Kelly's last few years, but bad breaks can do that, but even in those golden Brian Kelly years, we were still second tier, coming closer to first tier, much like how Michigan looked in 2021 and 2022.
Until we can show that we can beat the top tier guys at least a third of the time, we're not top tier, plain and simple. It's up to us to fix it.