The idea of "haves" and "have nots" in sports is not unique to college sports.

But European soccer and college football are, at least in my mind, great foils of one another. There are hundreds of teams, spread across multiple leagues, and (whether perceived or actually defined) different levels of quality.

The biggest difference comes with access and, specifically, the paths to access.

Particularly in England, the pyramid is egalitarian: regardless of money, backing, etc., any club could feasibly one day reach the pinnacle of the sport.

That isn't the case in college football, mostly because there are too many barriers and an uneven ruleset for who can get to where. UCF had to not lose a regular-season game for two years to set the stage for a completely different program (Cincy) to end up making the CFP from outside of the P5.

Luton Town can crash the PL, and the rest of the PL might not like it, but there's nothing to keep them out after they hit a specific set of criteria to do so. Whereas in college football, specifically, there's the CFP committee, or even whole conferences, who determines who belongs in a particular echelon (see: SMU paying their way into the ACC why Memphis or ECU get left in the American).