There should be only 80 D1 NCAA Teams

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So after watching the last few years of major college sports, one thing has become very clear to me.

With the transfer portal and NIL, it has become the haves and have nots.

Even with better regulation. Aka NIL caps and Contracts. The top will still be the top. The small and mid major schools will NEVER stand a chance. So why have them in the same tier of play as the big dogs?

All that does is make 60% of the games in the regular season and even playoffs absolutely pointless.

Shrink D1 NCAA down from ~400 to 80 for most sports.

And from ~170 to 48 for Football

And ~64 to 48 for Ice Hockey.

But those 40 Football and Hockey teams are a part of the over all 80.

Those lower teams go to d2.

The top 80 programs generate on AVERAGE! $200+ million annually i revenue and NIL.

The other 300+ schools? Less than $20m!

In fact those top 80 schools account for over 70% of ALL D1 AD Revenue.

The top 80 also account for over 85% of all final 4 appearances and over 90% of all championships since 1985.

So why have such a large league if 80% of them are canon fodder.

Heres the top 80 divided into 8 divisions for all other sports excluding hockey and football.
And 4 divisions of 12 for Hockey and Football

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Then the top schools out based on revenue and playoff performance

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I dont really see any school on that out list that anyone would cry about.

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One thing I agree with is watching some of the early season football games is pointless… Cupcake matchups and 50 point blowouts. Not always but often.

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You and your love of a caste system.

You take that back! It’s great for the draft. The only way you usually get to see small school guys against better competition.

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But any more? Last 2 years in the draft, i think if i remember correctly. 85%+ of the first 3 rounds were from power 4. i bet it will be even higher this year.

Because if your halfway decent you transfer.

48 teams in D1 FBS max. No world should

Ohio U. With a $10m budget for football including Donors.
Be competing with Ohio State with a $120m+ budget for football including donors

Ohio state pays more in JUST NIL for JUST football than OU has for their entire athletic department

Thats like saying Dallas Cowboys have a $1b stadium and $250m salary cap.

Gets to compete against
The UFL arlington renegades with a $10m stadium and $20m salary cap. Good luck.

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That is pretty wild but I believe it

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Certainly the talent is coalescing at the richer programs (I hate it so, so much), but doing this evaluation thing there are still a TON of guys to watch from non-blue blood schools, and whether they end up going early or not, they’re still hitting plenty. You could make quite the all-star team from guys who didn’t play P4/P5.

Ooh, that sounds fun. I’m gonna do just that. (Leaning on guys who came into the league since the portal started, indicated in bold).

QB: Josh Allen, Jordan Love, Derek Carr
RB: Aaron Jones, Tony Pollard, (Ashton Jeanty soon)
WR: Rashee Rice, Khalil Shakir
WR: Puka Nacua, Tyreek Hill, Rashid Shaheed
WR: Davante Adams, Tank Dell
OT: Bernhard Raimann, Braxton Jones
OG: Joel Bitonio, Quinn Meinerz, Nick Saldiveri
C: Aaron Brewer, Austin Corbett
OG: Tyler Smith, Mason McCormick, Cody Mauch
OT: Luke Goedeke, Tytus Howard
TE: Travis Kelce, Trey McBride, Isaiah Likely, Tucker Kraft

DE: Maxx Crosby, DeMarcus Lawrence, Jalyx Hunt
DT: Milton Williams, Karl Brooks
DT: Ed Oliver, Grover Stewart
DE: Khalil Mack, Trey Hendrickson,
LB: Fred Warner, Kaden Elliss
LB: Tyrice Knight, Bobby Wagner
LB: Azeez Al-Shaair, Demario Davis
CB: Quinyon Mitchell, Christian Benford, Joshua Williams
S: Kyle Dugger, Jeremy Chinn
S: Bryan Cook, Reed Blankenship
CB: Sauce Gardner, Riq Woolen

K: Chris Boswell
P: Jack Fox

Certainly the transfer portal will affect this (and I hate, hate, hate it), but there will always be guys who fall through the cracks, or guys who are loyal to the coaches.

I also think there’s some big school bias in play and I get it, much easier to project guys when they’re playing against other guys who will be in and around the league. It’s why so often the small-school guys who DO rise are the guys who play in the all-star games. It’s a box checked. But it doesn’t mean the guys who didn’t play in it couldn’t have checked that box as well, not if they meet the tape + athleticism requirements, as so many do.

Plus, you know, Northern Illinois vs. Notre Dame happens.

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Good post. You know it’s interesting what Holmes does. He has drafted a ton of Bama guys but has also took guys from smaller schools too. Although those haven’t really worked out yet.

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He’s looking for impact/ceiling, and smaller school guys are often underrated value due to the chickenshitedness of most FOs. And Houston hit pretty good for a second, until he didn’t. Still a good pick for the 6th round though. And pretty high hopes for Manu.

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Me too. The reports sounded pretty good about how much he has improved listening to Hank Fraley. I sure hope so. Manu and Mahogany becoming good players would be terrific.

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I hear what you’re saying. But the smaller school scouting will still happen.

I simply mean just from competitive and watchability standpoint.

Like most of the projected top25 teams have 5 auto wins on their schedule. And only the top ~60 have a chance of winning the championship day 1. So what, 80% of the games are pointless when it comes to the championship. Just makes it hard to enjoy a good Saturday of football. Like cool theres 50 games on, only 2 matter.

And yea since the transfer portal and NIL happened. Draft picks from NON P5 schools.
2020 - ~35%
2021 - 30%+
2022 - 25%
2023 - 20%
2024 - 16%

Im willing to bet it will be very close to 10% this year.

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@DBend144 and @Thats2

I have to say I love the original data, organized input, and constructive disagreement in this thread. Kudos to both of you. I am absorbing some serious knowledge here!

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Just looking at the 2025 Big Board of 500 draft Prospects.

405 from P4 schools (Excluding WaSt, Or St, Houston, Cinci, UCF, BYU, SMU)

68 from Go5 (includes those schools^^)

27 from FCS or lower

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I get it, and from a watchability stance I don’t really care. I ONLY watch for scouting stuff (unless it’s my alma mater). Though again, Northern Illinois vs. Notre Dame.

(Also, doesn’t the NCAA tourney suck now without the mid-major upsets? I know that is much more possible in basketball than football due to the smaller rosters, but still, an NCAA tourney without upsets is L-A-M-E lame).

However, I really, really hate the idea of just saying “well this is happening anyway, we should just lean into it.” No, we should try and fix it! I don’t know how you do that, and it might be naive, but you’re telling me the billions of dollars the ACC and Big 12 can scrape together - not to mention any help from the Boise States and MAC schools of the world - can’t help? I mean a lot of them are state schools, and states have a lot of money and sway.

And honestly…

…those games haven’t actually been competitive for 50, 70, 90 years, have they? I would guess the top 25 teams have had at least 5 auto wins on their schedule since they’ve played college football. To me, that’s nothing new.

I’m also morally opposed to any system that wants to keep restricting things until there’s only a few teams left to play “good” games against one another. That was the impetus behind the super league the big soccer teams tried to force onto the world a few years ago that got such backlash. Could you imagine if a few teams in the NFL had tried to do something like that over the past 30 years? Where would the Lions have ended up, do you think? And I enjoyed watching the Lions against the “good” teams, even if we lost a lot more than we won. Are we taking that from the fans of the smaller teams?

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I dont like it either. I wish it was still 100+ teams.

But at least before the portal if a small team got lucky with a QB, that QB was on the team for 4 years. And that team would be good for those 4 years Now? He can transfer before the bowl game.

And college sports theres no way to fix it.

Theres no draft, theres no restrictions on how many 5 star recruits you can sign, no contracts, no salary cap, no rookie wage scale.

Those things help make the NFL competitive.

Eventually i think there may be contracts and maybe even a salary cap for college and definitely better portal windows.

But that will only clean things up. Less chaos. The cream will still rise to the top.

Because the NCAA isn’t going to do anything.
Major conferences arnt going to lower themselves to make it more “fair”
And the top schools would NEVER agree to any of that.

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As opposed to limiting D1 Teams, I always thought they would be better off limiting D1 conferences. Each conference sends their conference champion to the NCAA playoffs. It would make sense to limit the number of conferences to 8 or 16, but any number between could work with byes/etc.

I also believe this format should have no bearing on the traditional bowl series for the teams that are not conference champions. Obviously, the bowls would be determined by likely viewership. I know that isn’t “fair” per se, but no reason to ignore the reality of the situation.

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So more context.

NCAA D1 athletics.
Roughly a $20 BILLION operation (including NIL)
60% of that alone is football. (Only 264 ~400 schools are D1 FBS + FCS) So $12B is football.

50% or $6B+ of that is those top 48 schools.
Meaning that other $6b is the 216 schools.
125m average vs $25m average. 5:1 revenue.

This year in the draft.
Of the top 500 players 60% are from those top 48. (85%+ from P4)

Since 1990! The top 48 have won every championship, appeared in every championship game.

And 3x has a team not in the top 48 finished top 5 in the final poll. (Cini 2x, Wa St 1x)

And if the 12 team CFP existed since 1990.
The top 48 own 90%+ of the spots.

And the ONLY reason its not higher because a GO5 team gets an auto bid. So remove the auto bid. And only 8 out of the 372 playoff appearances are not in the top 48.

So take those top 48. Make a new division above FBS. 4 conferences of 12.

FBS now becomes 8 conferences of 12. (Adding in the top 8 from FCS) regionally alined.

Would make the FBS competitive and entertaining. Allowing players to develop.

And the new league would have better regulation on transfers and NIL. Balanced scheduling. While maintaining key rivalries.

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I could get behind that.

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And there is your problem, you have only watched the last few years of college sports apparently. Reality is that college sports has always been the haves and the have nots. Parity has never been a thing. There is a reason that that Big Ten for years was referred to as the Big 2 Little 8.

Nothing wrong with cutting it to 80 teams, but it wouldnt be based on anything new.

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80 teams for all other sports. (Basketball, baseball/softball, lacrosse, soccer, etc)
48 for Football.

And i understand it has been have and have nots for a while. But now with the transfer portal and NIL.
Even when a smaller school gets luckey with a good prospect. They transfer.
Where as back in the day. A smaller school like Marshall, Hawaii, heck even Purdue or Kentucky get lucky and get a few good players to stick around for 3-4 years. They had a good record and played in the new years 6.

You are never gonna see that again. Where a smaller school makes the CFP. Unless its a Go5 school getting the auto bid.