Now, in the NIL era, the gap is even bigger and reality of the gap size is beginning to match the belief of typical casual fans or fans that are more a fan of just their team.
Agree with your post, Victory, but would add not just the NIL era but also the transfer portal era, perhaps an even bigger factor.
I talked with a rather knowledgeable sports person a few days ago who said that in his analysis the portal was helping the upper tier G5 teams because they were getting transfers from very high ranked high school recruits who were tired of sitting on the pine at their P4 school. I haven't done any kind of analysis of this myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was correct. He also said the upper tier of G5 schools now have more depth on their benches due to the above factor as well as a greater number of JUCO transfers.
I have heard this sort of talk as well. It seems completely false. Computers are calculating a bigger gap from actual out of conference game results. Also, ask yourself this, how many players, as graduating seniors, are we putting into the NFL even though we have won 10, 10, and 11? We might, I agree, since there are just more players coming in and out of the program, get just as many or more over time that played for us at one point. Also, I think it is true that our freshman recruiting classes might be slightly better, it looks to me like they have been, since P5 are not as worried about developing their own players but instead taking our juniors and seniors. But we will have those NFL players, like Kaczmarek, as freshmen. Anyone, who focused just on that as thinks it adds up as an advantage is, IMO, off their rocker.