You're going to have a tough time convincing me that any big football program except ND and Stanford* isn't playing the same game. I don't care if it's an excellent academic school (Texas, Michigan) or a crap academic school (Arizona State, Florida State) or something in between. The big programs are all lowering standards, considerably, for football players.
*You can add Cal and BC to this list if you consider them to be big football programs. I don't.