There are many prerequisites for running a successful program. Local access to a lot of talent, a good coaching staff that knows how to identify talent both player and coach, coach it, present a superior game plan, have great facilities, and convince kids your school is where they want to go. However, if you look at the five programs that have won a NC since the move to four teams, they all spent heavily on players. There are going to be players that are not motivated by money. However, removing the set of players motivated by money caps a team. Throwing money at the problem is not enough. A great example is Kentucky. They had the cash. But they did not have most of the other things. All of their money has them still at square one. I do not know Kentucky's NIL network. Bagmen are like blackholes. There is no instrument to measure them directly. But you can measure them by the strange conduct of a set of recruits over time.
Two movements are opening up variance. The first is NIL. NIL makes payments above board, legal, and of a scale much greater than what a bagman can afford. Billionaires can play and pay and do it legally. This is introducing other players like Texas, Texas A&M, USC, Miami, etc. It has not panned out yet because you still need to do all of the other things right also. The core SEC teams are not the wealthiest programs. There are alumni bases that are bigger and wealthier. If it comes to pure dollars some of these schools can compete. But will take time as its more than money as we see with Texas A&M. All of those other things are sort of important also. The second movement is the 12 team expansion to the playoff. Less time and more games means more variance. Just like the NFL a team not playing its A game may get upset. There is more of an opportunity for the best team to lose.
But back to the first theme, to win you have to do all of the above and that means pay. NIL is changing the landscape. I find the contrast between Colorado and Stanford interesting. Both are great academic schools. Stanford is accepting that they will not make the changes required of them. This means a stricter adherence to NIL interpretation and a refusal to relax rules on credits being accepted towards a degree. Colorado is taking the opposite approach and are all in.
College football is like climbing Mt Everest if you want to replace someone at the top. As of today it is Georgia, Alabama, and OSU. A program that wants to replace a king has to be all in if they want a shot. If you don't want to pay or can't pay, does not mean a team can't have a great season. I think conference champions and meaningful games can be won. One just can't be whatever is Georgia or its equivalent in the future in a NC format.