NCAA Football and college basketball share the same NIL economy, and the numbers from the 2025-26 season expose a hard truth: the transfer portal and name, image and likeness compensation are draining mid-major programs of the depth they once used to pull off landmark upsets. Coaches, administrators and analysts across college sports are pointing to NIL, the transfer portal and risk-averse scheduling as forces concentrating talent at a shrinking group of power programs. The competitive gap is widening fast, and the data backs that up.
Tracking this trend over three seasons reveals a pattern that should alarm anyone who loves a good underdog story. Since schools began compensating players for NIL rights in 2021-22, small-conference programs have lost ground at a rate that would have seemed impossible just five years ago. The structural forces at work — roster turnover, scheduling retreats by power schools, and mid-major coaches openly selling their programs as stepping stones — are not short-term noise. They represent a fundamental reset of how college athletics operates from the ground up.
How NIL and the Transfer Portal Changed NCAA Football’s Competitive Balance
NIL compensation and the transfer portal have functionally rewired roster construction across college sports, giving power-conference programs a financial lever that small schools simply cannot match. Mid-major coaches are now openly marketing their programs as pathways to power conferences rather than destinations in their own right, which sacrifices the roster continuity that historically fueled Cinderella tournament runs. The result is a college landscape where upsets are becoming structurally harder to produce.
The numbers reveal a pattern that is difficult to argue with. Only 29 small-conference teams beat power-conference opponents during the 2025-26 season — a 58.9% decrease from the 2021-22 season, the first year NIL compensation was permitted. That is not a blip. That is a structural collapse in competitive parity, playing out in real time across college campuses from Boise to Baton Rouge.
Power-conference programs have also pulled back from scheduling mid-majors in the regular season, opting instead for high-profile neutral-site matchups against other power schools. On the surface, that looks like ambition. Dig deeper and it reads more like avoidance — fewer opportunities for small programs to build the momentum and resume that make tournament runs possible. The scheduling retreat compounds the roster drain, leaving mid-majors squeezed from two directions at once.
What Do the Stats Say About the Growing Power-Conference Edge?
The advanced metrics tell a stark story about how lopsided the matchups between power and non-power programs have become. In the 2021-22 season, non-power conference teams were 16.3-point underdogs on average against power-conference opponents, according to ESPN data. That baseline already reflected a significant gap. The subsequent decline in upset frequency suggests the gap has only widened since NIL dollars began flowing freely.
Breaking down the advanced metrics further, some power-conference programs tipped off the 2025-26 season with five new starters — a roster churn rate that would have been unthinkable in the pre-portal era. Yet even with that level of turnover, those programs maintained enough recruiting infrastructure and NIL resources to remain dominant. Mid-major programs that lose even one or two key players to the portal often cannot recover within a single offseason cycle.
Michigan State’s Pauga, who also assists conferences with scheduling logistics, acknowledges that some programs may be steering clear of dangerous mid-major opponents — but argues the system still rewards teams that schedule quality competition. That counterpoint deserves a fair hearing. The college football and basketball scheduling ecosystem is complex, and not every power program is deliberately ducking small schools. Still, the aggregate data suggests the incentive structure, whatever individual programs intend, is producing fewer crossover matchups and fewer upset opportunities.
Key Developments in the NIL-Driven Shift
Small-conference programs won only 29 games against power-conference opponents in 2025-26, down sharply from pre-NIL baseline levels.
The 58.9% drop in small-conference upsets over power programs since 2021-22 represents the steepest single-era decline in modern college sports parity data.
Multiple mid-major head coaches have publicly framed their programs as feeders to power conferences, a recruiting pitch that would have been career suicide a decade ago.
Non-power conference teams averaged 16.3-point underdog status against power opponents in 2021-22 — the starting point before NIL further widened the talent gap.
Power-conference schools are replacing mid-major regular-season games with neutral-site matchups against fellow power programs, cutting off a traditional path for small schools to build at-large résumés.
Where Does NCAA Football’s NIL Landscape Go From Here?
NCAA Football’s broader NIL framework — already reshaping recruiting, roster management and draft strategy analysis across college sports — shows no signs of reversing course. The salary cap implications at the college level are not formal yet, but the House v. NCAA settlement framework moving through federal courts in 2026 would allow schools to share revenue directly with athletes, potentially institutionalizing the financial advantages that power programs currently hold through NIL collectives. That structural change would make the competitive gap even harder to close through scheduling or coaching alone.
Mid-major programs are not sitting still. Several athletic directors have begun exploring conference realignment options and shared NIL pool arrangements with regional boosters, trying to compete at a fraction of the cost. Whether those efforts produce meaningful results before the next wave of portal movement reshapes rosters again is an open question. Based on available data, the numbers suggest the window for organic mid-major competitiveness is narrowing with each passing recruiting cycle.
The defensive scheme breakdown for mid-majors has always been their calling card — disciplined, system-based basketball and football built on continuity. NIL has disrupted that continuity engine. Until the broader college athletics governance structure finds a way to redistribute resources more evenly, or until mid-majors develop sustainable NIL pipelines of their own, the upset-friendly chaos that defined March Madness and college football’s rivalry weekends will keep shrinking. Power programs will keep winning. And the bracket will keep looking chalk.
Marcus Cole is a former college quarterback who has spent over 12 years covering the NFL as a sportswriter. After playing four seasons at the collegiate level, he transitioned to journalism and quickly earned a reputation for breaking down complex play designs in plain English. His work has been featured in regional sports publications across the South, and he has covered six Super Bowls from the press box. Marcus specializes in offensive scheme analysis, quarterback evaluations, and draft coverage.
