Widen gap?
Why? Most pension funds pay heavy fees to perform worse than the S&P 500. They should just buy SPY and be done with it.
That is my thought too 
It puzzled me alot since there are many academic studies concluding that S&P index is hard to beat 
Academic doesn’t believe what they published?
It doesn’t matter what they believe. What matters is the person who makes decision on which investment firm to hire. It might be more important for him to get a free dream vacation from a vendor than a 3% difference in investment return. This is the beauty of separation of public ownership and management.
Idiots. Citizens need to revolt and demand pension funds strictly invest in a fund that models the S&P 500 with the lowest expense ratio. Let the big firms bid for the business on the basis of expense ratio.