The Gophers football season will be defined by this Wisconsin game

“The parity, when you look at like the fifth team in the Big Ten down to maybe the 14th team, they’re all within one or two wins and losses of each other,” Fleck said. “It’s all really close. This is what we talked about, what the new Big Ten is going to look like.”

He’s right. College football in general is experiencing a sea change. The confluence of name, image and likeness; the transfer portal; and conference expansion has delivered the kind of parity the sport has so desperately sought.

Look at the top ten positions. Ten teams are within three games of each other. The difference between 8-3 and 5-6 is not as dramatic as one might think because so many programs are relatively similar.

That is how it will be in this new world order. A few elite teams in the top tier, a few bad teams in the bottom tier, and then everyone else in the messy middle.

The split down the middle — the difference between an average season and a great one — comes down to coin-flip plays and whether a team capitalizes on those opportunities. The margin is so small for most of the league.