Is NIL bringing more parity to college football?

A player knowing that he is buried on a team's depth chart and/or being constantly recruited over can transfer at any time and get some instant playing time is what is driving the NIL money quest.

Riley Leonard, as one example, may still have left Duke but he may be incentivized to go to place that needs him to fill a hole/gap in recruiting that gives him a better chance at team and personal success.

In many cases, this leads to "second tier" teams being able to enhance their talent and become more competitive with the top tier teams. The collar hypothesis leads to underrecruited/ late blossoming guys also getting the opportunity to go from second tier teams to top tier teams and enhance their long-term earning potential.

It certainly seems like the drop off from the top 5 to the rest isn’t as severe. OSU and TX seem like they are solid but outside of that there are no guarantees.

What I mean is, the mid-majors and lower-end P5 schools suffer from a net outflow of 3* recruits that turned into NFL caliber players and move to a P5 school and make $$$. Players get to prove themselves and develop at a smaller school and get their dream offer after a year or two.

It allows top tier teams to recover quickly from roster mistakes and NFL draft attrition, and deep pocketed schools without much of a historical track record of success (Texas A&M) to put together very talented rosters. Hot new coaches can bring a lot of players from their former team and other schools to build a roster quickly.

Highly talented backups can go from one blue chip to another pretty seamlessly. Joe Burrow is an example, and that was back when you had to be a graduate student to transfer without a waiver.

If parity means more contenders, then yes. If parity means a more even distribution of talent, then no, especially with the hoarding of TV $$$s by the biggest conferences.