For several decades there were major "blue-blood" programs as well as lesser "power" conference teams that gobbled up most of the resources and talent. These schools basically lived in the NIL era for this entire time because big boosters would provide benefits to recruits under the table. Lesser programs that attempted similar tactics (and were not nearly as good at hiding it) were then hammered by the NCAA with infractions. Some big programs would also offer "jobs" to family members of recruits to pay even more for their play, but most of this stuff happened under the table. Once in a while a major program would get hit with infractions, but 99% of the time the under the table crap didn't get caught.

The NIL era is the great equalizer because boosters and cooperatives can now just flat out pay players for playing at their team of choice. Again, this has been going on for a long long time in major men's football and men's basketball, so that means the playing field has been evened up quite a bit. This is obviously a big part of why we are seeing multiple 4* BB recruits accepting offers from BYU for the first time ever. So parity is going to be more evident not only for power programs versus G5, but also among "blue-bloods" and "lesser" power teams because the teams are competing for recruits on a much more even playing field.

I think we're seeing an increasing degree of parity in college sports as more players recruited in the NIL era take the field of play. For example, the only undefeated teams ranked in the T10 are Oregon and Indiana. Indiana has not played a single ranked team (like Army who is ranked #18). Last year there were four undefeated teams in the T10. Also, the top 10 teams through 13 weeks this year have 12 losses among them whereas last year the T10 had only 6 losses total at this point in the season. Going back ten years I don't see a single year with more than 10 losses among the T10 after 13 weeks, so this year is different.

Some of that parity is a mechanical relationship arising from several blue-bloods jumping to the B1G/SEC, which will naturally result in more top teams with losses, but I think it also has to do with NIL. I say this because I'm seeing a lot of parity in the B12 that I don't think can be explained simply because Texas and OU left. There are just a lot of really talented teams from top to bottom and so any team can lose to any other team (see BYU/ISU v. Kansas, Houston v. KSU). I realize it stinks losing to a team with a losing record like Kansas, but they were picked to finish high in the pre-season polls and they have a lot of talent on that team.

I think we need to learn to accept that our team could lose any game in the B12 and try not to get too bent out of shape when it happens. That's just the way it is going to be in the B12 in the NIL era and we are still in the midst of a special season that none of us expected two months ago.