
Sure some programs have ramped up their spending but look at your graph, the top spenders are mostly the blue bloods and historically good programs, nothing is different from 5 years ago except for a few programs like Indiana taking advantage of NIL. The blue bloods are still by and large dominating the sport, the payment just isn’t under the table now
Only 3 of the top 10 spenders are blue bloods (4, if you want to include Texas). Oklahoma and Nebraska are blue bloods who don’t have the money to buy elite players consistently now, and yes I know Nebraska has sucked for a while. You can’t really succeed without a ton of money unless you have an ELITE coaching staff like Georgia
Yet the top 20 are pretty much all historically elite programs and most of those programs are still having success now. It’s no different than it was 5 years ago, it’s just that more programs can fundraise and compete for some of these players now which helps increase parity, which I think is a good thing for the sport. But really overall the blue bloods are still making CFPs every year and are spending more than most programs, nothing has drastically changed