I don't think Paul should be fired, but he does need to shake up his staff. He needs to find some better recruiters, and play calling/development on the offensive side of the ball.
But I am actually leaning towards the fact that mediocrity may be the ceiling for ISU in football. Our history has shown that it's almost impossible to win here on any sort of consistent basis.
ISU has to hold the record (I'm too lazy to look it up) for BCS league teams losing to 1AA/FCS teams.
Our facilities have gotten much better, but so has everyone else's so we probably haven't changed as much as we think we have relative to our competitors.
Ames is for many reasons, one of the toughest places to recruit in the major sports, but particularly football, where most players come from warm climates.
Hell, look at basketball. We have a great atmosphere (Hilton), some modest tradition, one of the hottest coaches in the country right now, who happens to be good looking, charming, bright, etc and he's struggling to land good players out of HS. For the most part, his success hinges on transfers, jucos and being creative with recruiting, which is exactly what Floyd and LE did.
Football doesn't have as much in the way of transfers, and there seems to be far fewer juco recruits because the truly great ones that were in juco because of grades are picked over by the big programs.