If ND thinks that Xavier Gilliam or Francis Brewu are multi-year starters and impact players the likes of some of the players that they already paid to retain, then at some point they're to have to be willing to bite the bullet pay what the market demands that they do... Unless one of three things.
1). They are extremely confident that they'll get a similar player for cheaper later in the cycle.
2). They are extremely confident that they have players developing internally that will have a similar impact for cheaper.
3). They're ok fielding an inferior team than they could have otherwise fielded had they spent the necessary cash to make it better.
That's why I don't get too worked up about these things. We don't control the finances. We don't coach the kids. We're not in charge of roster construction. So there's no point getting spun up about something I can't control. Surely I'll opine about what I think might be happening and I'll analyze the outcome, but I'm not going to get attached to it emotionally.
To add on to this, we don’t have enough information to really have strong views on whether or not things are being managed well.
What’s our overall NIL budget? What’s going to guys on our squad? What are these players asking? How does the staff feel about guys on our roster?
We only have incomplete information about all of these questions, but they’re crucial to having informed opinions as to what’s going on right now. Sure, it’s easy to spend other people’s money and say we should spend what it takes to land the top portal guys, but that might or might not be a productive use of resources.
