Don’t worry about star rankings — this was always going to happen in a post-House world

Alabama has flipped quite a few 3- and 4-star commitments over the past few weeks, and in the process it has given rise to panic among some fans worried if the talent level is slipping.

The TL/DR is no, the starters are going to be among the most elite in the sport. But, what will diminish is elite quality depth, and that is true no matter the school — provided they are above-board in working within the salary cap and revenue sharing model.

You can thank the House settlement for that, as it was always inevitable.

It is true that schools are now permitted to fully-fund 105 scholarships, and each school is permitted to spend up to $20.5 million dollars on revenue sharing (with that sum anticipated to grow to $30m over the next half-decade). But that doesn’t mean that many programs will, or that many even can.

For our best data from 2019, how many athletics programs do you think were fully profitable in 2019? Whatever your guess is, the actual number is shockingly lower: Just 25. At most schools, athletics programs are an adjunct to the university and subsided by them; we know that a successful sports imprint leads to secondary benefits like increased enrollment, attendance, prestige, increased donor participation etc. So these are often seen as investment into the school itself.

But athletics departs unto themselves? They’re surprisingly terrible investments, if the aim is to make money on a dollar-in / dollar-out basis. In fact, last year just a dozen schools had self-sufficient athletics programs across all all of D1 — Alabama was not one of them, with its $11M+ payout to Nick Saban and DeBoer’s UW buyout. Not even super-profitable programs like Georgia, Michigan and Tennessee escaped the need for broader university funding.

All of which leads us to House. While teams can spend $20 million on athletic revenue share, that doesn’t mean that outside of the Big Two and the upper half of the Big 12 and ACC that they will…or that they even have the capacity, should they wish to do so. In fact, to even pay their back-owed portion of revenue sharing, Olympic sports are already being shuttered, sports cut, and scholarships diminishing across the Group of Five.

And that’s for all sports. Most “football” schools are apportioning between 50 and 60% of their cap money to the sport. That’s smart; football is still the breadwinner at most institutions, no matter how poor the program.

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But that means as a practical matter, even at the richest schools, only $12m or so is going into football. It doesn’t take much mathing to realize that’s not a whole bunch of payola to spread out over 105 players — most of them with attorneys and agents and hangers-on seeking to maximize their market value…even if they outbid themselves right on their ass, and into the transfer portal to give sad handies at a B-tier outpost.

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A few weeks ago, analyzing the House settlement, I did tell you that the net result of this would be a model that is going to poach depth pieces from “lower” programs, and “lesser” players to fill out depth, while incentivizing existing backups without a quality body of work to stay.

Why would you want to go and kick in front of 317 people at Ball State, pay your own way, and miss out on some Big Ten titles?

That’s what we’ve seen the last two weeks. A three-star player at Rutgers, who might otherwise be penciled in to start for the Scarlet Knights, can and will go to a program like Alabama, where they will be better developed, have more eyeballs on them, do some winning, and have more immediate money in their pocket (even leaving aside the long-term value they create for themselves).

The flipside to this is the diminishment of elite depth. Since there is a hard-cap on the amount that can be spent — and teams suddenly have twenty new scholarships to fund and payouts to make — few teams are going to want to overpay for project players or roster depth.

We’re seeing it happen at Alabama. But the Tide is hardly alone.

Take a look at Ohio State’s 2026 class, currently ranked No. 5 by Rivals: Of the 16 hard commitments the Buckeyes received, almost half (7), are three-star players. Just five years ago, for the entire class, OSU had just three such players for the entire signing class.

And you can play this star-value game for almost any team you wish in the post-House framework, even the most profligate spenders: Texas? Nine of 15 are 3-star commits. Georgia? Eleven of 20. Miami? Eight of 17.

Teams simply cannot afford to pay blue chip talent to come sit on the bench, not when you can get Top 25 players at their position though they may come with marginally lower star rankings.

This model does harm the G5, for sure, and it does a number on the lower-half of the Power Conference teams (Illinois, Rutgers being most recent victims). The money simply isn’t there.

As CrimsonHayate succinctly analogized today:

Once you get to the middle of the P5, schools can’t afford to pay up to the cap. It’s like the Arizona Cardinals in the 1990s. Every year they would be 20 or 30 million under the salary cap because Bill Bidwell gave no shits about winning football games.

Just because the money could be spent, doesn’t mean the money will be spent…and for most D1 schools, that the money will even be there.

But at the same time, the dominoes House set in motion will likely spread blue chip talent out a bit — there are only about 100 of those guys any given year, and if you’re coloring inside the lines, it means the market sets their worth, not whatever a school can cobble together. Elite programs are going to lose elite depth, simple-as.

However, for teams trying to play by the rules, it makes infinitely more sense to pay $200K for a three-star backup safety than it does $800K for a high-end blue chip talent to fill that same role.

It’s about the money, and this is our new reality.
Don’t panic: It’s already affecting everyone.