Competitive balance in the NIL era: recruiting redistribution and stability in the revenue–performance relationship

The introduction of name, image, and likeness (NIL) compensation has substantially altered the economic environment of NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) football, but whether this change has modified the relationship between program financial strength, recruiting distribution, and on-field performance remains unclear. This study evaluates these relationships by comparing pre-NIL (2017) and post-NIL (2025) FBS seasons using estimated game-day ticket revenue, Simple Rating System (SRS) performance, and team recruiting-point totals. Logarithmic regression identified a strong diminishing-returns relationship between estimated revenue and SRS in both periods, with coefficients of determination of 0.5001 in 2017 and 0.5512 in 2025. Despite the apparent increase in explanatory power, a Chow test found no statistically significant structural difference between the two regression relationships (F = 0.304, p = 0.738), while bootstrap analyses likewise showed that the observed differences in both R² and regression slope were consistent with sampling variation. Thus, the association between estimated financial strength and on-field performance remained statistically stable across the two periods examined. A different pattern emerged for recruiting. The Gini coefficient for recruiting-point totals decreased from 0.1767 in 2017 to 0.1451 in 2025, with a bootstrapped 95% confidence interval for the difference of [−0.057, −0.005], indicating a statistically significant broadening of recruiting-point distribution across FBS programs. Together, these findings reveal an important distinction between competitive inputs and realized competitive outcomes in the NIL era: recruiting value became more evenly distributed across programs without a detectable corresponding change in the relationship between estimated revenue and on-field performance. Rather than demonstrating that NIL has already equalized competitive performance, the results suggest that its more readily detectable association may lie upstream, in the distribution of recruiting resources. This separation between recruiting redistribution and performance stability provides a quantitative framework for evaluating how major changes in collegiate athlete compensation may propagate through competitive systems over time.