Sonny Dykes predicts future split among P4, G5 schools: 'Alabama and La Tech aren't playing the same sport'

What had been a slow, inching march to a new model of high-level college football has quickly become a seeming inevitability, and one in the not-too-distant future as TCU head coach Sonny Dykes sees things.

And with the supposed Power 4 leagues — the SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 — poised to move to a model where at least football players (and likely other athletes) are compensated like employees, coaches predict a split between the two tranches of leagues that comprise FBS football. Multiple coaches also shared this view with Dave Campbell’s Texas Football in a recent story.

“There’s got to be a split eventually,” Dykes said to DCTF’s Mike Craven. “There is such a big difference right now between the haves and the have nots and I think we’ll eventually split into two separate divisions. Alabama and La. Tech aren’t playing the same sport.”

The current animating force that has college football hurtling toward employment status for players are the negotiations toward a settlement in the House vs. NCAA lawsuit. The general gist is that a settlement — if agreed to by plaintiffs, defendants and signed off on by the judge — would usher in an employment model for at least high-level college football.

And as it becomes a question of devoting athletic department resources to maintaining a roster payroll for a football team, the true stratification between the big-spending, monied power league teams and the likes of G5 schools will start to manifest.

Plus, more financial differentiation might only accelerate the rate at which top G5 players transfer up to play at P4 institutions.

“These jobs are even harder now because if one of your players has a great season, he’s probably getting plucked away,” Dykes said. “Your only chance is to build a great culture and hope that keeps most of your roster intact.”

Eric Morris, the head coach at North Texas, tended to agree with Dykes and suspects the G5 teams will operate largely the same as they are now as the P4 leagues collectively bargain and move to employment.

And for Morris, the question then becomes about keeping the G5 teams relevant and thriving if they’re more formally in the second class of college football nationwide.

Logically, the Group of 5 schools could form their own postseason playoff tournament, have their own weekly rankings, and ostensibly function as college football as mostly recognize it today. And this would also eliminate the likely possibility in the upcoming 12-team playoff that the lone G5 team to make the field will be bludgeoned by one of the top P4 teams.

SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee, who will be leading the Mustangs out of the G5 and into the ACC this season, thinks it has merit to have teams picking on opponents their own size.

“Would you rather get beat 48-7 to Georgia in the first round or play for a championship?” Lashlee said. “Some say it makes it FCS football, but FCS football thrives for what it is. What saves G5 football is competition.”

And Lashlee added that he doesn’t think it would necessarily make G5 as attractive as the P4 schools, and transfers would still be looking for greener pastures, but that it makes the week-to-week product more enticing.

“I think fans would’ve loved it if Liberty, SMU, Troy and Boise State were in a four-team playoff last year,” Lashlee said. “Kids will still transfer up or down by at least each school is competing for something.”