Could the NCAA save College Football?

It seems to me and others around me that college football has become boring, with the outcomes easily predicted at the start of the season. Most regular season games are blowouts, the same teams dominate their conference, and all the best recruits go to the same schools. There are no ups and downs for Clemson/Bama/OSU. They reload every year and the chances of them not making their conference title game are zero. What has happened is the top teams have monopolized their conferences, with only the SEC even coming close to being competitive. There are ~ 8 teams that have a chance at making the playoffs. These teams consistently take all the top recruits and get tons of media hype, which serve to make their advantage even greater. I don't know about you, but everyone I know thinks this is boring as shite. It used to be the smaller programs could put together a good team every couple years and make a run at a conference title. There was excitement and drama when it was time for conference title games to be played. Those days are gone. Smaller schools making a run get exposed as frauds every time they have to face the current monopoly schools. There is no real competition. Clemson has won the ACC 5 times in a row. OSU has won the Big 10 4 times in a row. OU has won the Big 12 6 times in a row. Bama has won 5 of the last 6 SEC titles and no one even THINKS about the PAC 12 making the playoffs anymore because they dont have a monopoly team yet (Oregon is getting there).

So how can we fix this? The NCAA busting programs for recruiting violations. Now everyone knows the NCAA has been a paper tiger ever since the early 2000s when they got neutered by the Miami investigation. As a result recruiting has become the wild west, which I think is the cause of the extreme lack of parity in todays game. But if the NCAA were to gain power to enforce the rules they could fix everything.

People who follow recruiting closely usually feel there is evidence that top recruits get paid. Every team that has a 5 star or high 4 star on their roster has assuredly committed several major NCAA violations. There's no shame in it. Its what you have to do. Everybody committed to winning is doing it. But it has to stop for the sport to survive. Basically, if every program in the top 20/25 of recruiting was busted for the cheating that has become mandatory to compete in college football, competitive football would come back. Without the financial incentives, other programs who don't have bagmen would end up snagging great recruits for various reasons and the NCAA could handicap the benefactors of the cheating until there was an equilibrium.

We saw what happened to USC after NCAA gave them a 2 year bowl ban and took away scholarships for 3. The dynasty ended and the rest of the conference flourished with the top recruits going to other schools. The Pac 12 actually became interesting to watch with Oregon, Stanford, UCLA all putting together good teams that weren't head and shoulders above the rest of the conference.

I don't think this idea will be popular on this board since it would involve NCAA punishments for probably more than half the schools in the SEC. I just think that its a bullet worth biting. I might actually enjoy watching UGA play more with scholarship reductions if it felt like Mizzou and Tennessee could have competitive games against us again. I think With 3/4 years of handicapping the major cheaters we might go back to the way football used to be. I know parity has never been perfect or even good in college ball, but frick it has never been this bad before. The best teams wouldn't blow everyone out in all their regular season games before. These last 2 years I've been forced to start following the NFL because of how boring college has become.