It’s kind of a mixed bag, ranging from the obvious (“Loyalty is dead. Money is king.”) to the… well, obvious (“And yet, money can’t fix everything.”). But the first lesson in their piece is the one I want to focus on in this post, particularly this part by Ari Wasserman ($$).
In discussing whether the transfer portal lessens the need for blue chip stars on a team’s roster, he writes,
TCU was the beneficiary of an incredibly advantageous path. That isn’t to invalidate what it accomplished or how good of a team it was at the end of the year, but the Horned Frogs lost in the national title game by 100 and didn’t even win the Big 12. This was a Cinderella story because TCU outplayed its stars and managed to side-step teams built like Georgia until the very end. When TCU played Georgia, the stars mattered. TCU is a good example of how a team can overachieve based on those star ratings — which makes this sport fun, especially as the Playoff expands — but a real test of the “stars matter” theory has to be Michigan this year. Michigan isn’t loaded in the blue-chip ratio, but it could win a national title this season. Which brings me to the next point. [Emphasis added.]
I think that’s accurate to a large extent. But it really makes me consider is how much harder it’s going to be for a team like TCU to play in a national title game once the CFP expands to twelve. The Frogs only had to dodge one bullet last season to get there; how many will they have to dodge playing four, especially if the field is littered with teams from the top of the Big Ten and SEC?
The idea that an expanded field is going to act as some sort of leveler seems awfully misguided to me.
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