Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Wisconsin, wouldn't be surprised if there's others, their spending growth each year outpaces Illinois. Their conference affiliation, and the associated revenue helps them against G5 programs, or mid-tier Big 12 in the region, but they're still stuck in a situation where they'll never compete for a conference title in football on their own merits--they need a collapse of several programs above them.

The fundamental mechanic that drives this, that creates the power law distribution, is the fact that there's no upper limit on spending and the money disproportionately accumulates to the programs that are already the richest. Even if the top 16 programs split off to form their own super league, it just temporarily resets things for everyone else. As long as that mechanic exists, the natural outcome is a small number of programs become unassailably better than the rest.

This is a big reason why I think they need to scrap the amateurism, get rid of scholarships, and just have program-wide salary caps (i.e. both players and coaches). If you want to have a 64 team league, set that cap at whatever the spending of like the 40th highest program is. Just like the NFL, it means a lot more parity, your typical Super Bowl contender doesn't have 0-1 losses, they have 2-4 losses. It'd be the virtual end of dynasties, no more 1990s FSU or 2010s Alabama.