to use Air Force" - I used it bc it provides the ideal example of the fact that power structure, distribution of talent, and levels of competitiveness are vastly different now from what they were when Bryant Gumbel was making his dumb argument. They were a legit top 10 team in 1985, no service academy is going to approach that in 2024.

In the 80s and early 90s the top 10 programs in the country or even top 40 didn't have the monopoly, the stranglehold on elite talent that they have enjoyed for most of the last 15 years. Talent was more widely distributed before the advent of the BCS.

NIL is now causing it to correct the other direction toward parity - but bottom line, there was not the yawning gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" in 1985 as there has been over the last decade.