The answer for Buffalo is their now former athletic director, Allen Greene, who actually left this spring to become AD at Auburn. He was the youngest AD in the nation when he was hired back in 2012, and he started new fundraising and facilities campaigns and a new sponsorship program with Nike, made really good coaching choices, and didn’t accept the status quo. He ran the program and set expectations like it was an SEC school (remember when they tried that athletic rebranding as the State of New York Bulls - that ended while he was there).
They had a young energetic guy with SEC ties come in, set the program straight over 6 years, and finally got his call up back to a big job in the SEC. They are starting to see the real fruits of the seeds he laid. If they can continue down their trajectory, they will be the #1 overall program in the MAC, like, in the here and now. It took 20 years to have found that right person, but they are starting to become the program the MAC thought they could be when they were invited.