the advantage of top schools in d1 is pretty clearly out of whack right now. when i started d1, BCS schools had an advantage, but it wasn't like it is today, people could compete in the NT without being an A prestige BCS school. heck, i won my first title as a rookie recruiter with a C+ prestige out at colorado. i didn't feel like i had a big disadvantage compared to other coaches - a small one, sure, but nothing i couldn't compensate for with coaching.
however, people weren't really that happy with d1 back then, either. nobody (generally speaking) complained about the advantage of one school over the other. but tons of people complained that there was too much talent, that there were 50 teams almost full of players who had 90s in all their cores. oldresorter coined the game "coin flip dynasty", which i thought was a bit unfair, nobody really was into coaching those days, which to me, was the real problem. but he had a valid point, there were so many players with 90s in their cores... so many... it was more than a bit ridiculous.
i think it makes a lot of sense how we got where we are now. i didn't see it coming, not sure many people did, but most of us wanted the talent level across teams to be more varied. when you cut back on talent, from a situation where so many teams are "haves", you are going to move towards a situation like today where you have so many more "have-nots". did seble go too far? almost certainly. is there a happy medium that would solve most problems? maybe, or maybe structural changes are needed.
there's really two points i'm trying to make here... first, advocating for massive structural changes, its going to come with unforseen effects, like the last overhaul did. just trying to nuke away all that makes d1 d1, turning it into d2/d3, i just don't think that's a good idea. and secondly, i think people try to make this into a battle between the haves and the have-nots. i don't agree with that, that is wrong, IMO. its just that the haves have been in d1 for a long time, they loved d1 for various reasons, and they don't want to see what they loved about d1 stripped away. almost everyone agrees d1 balance is out of whack. that doesn't mean we will all agree on the solutions, and when we don't, that certainly doesn't mean the other folks with different opinions have those opinions for purely selfish reasons. that garbage line of thinking needs to go.