I'd argue it is a weakness of ours. I don't think 5 star DEs want to dish out oatmeal at the food local pantry to leave with the same paycheck as the women's swimmer. $5M a year would be over $50K per scholarship player, per year, spread evenly. And that's damn attractive IMO.
The problem for ND football would be, I assume they'd spread the 5M across all sports making it meaningless
There's some misinformation going around about NIL. Who knows, it might be me who's misinformed, but what I've read states that ND is pretty firmly in the top bracket of getting its players paid in the end. I don't think the overall money is the issue.
It's just that ND (and FUND) doesn't do 3 things:
1. Guarantee that you're going to make XXX,XXX dollars over X years if you sign (big contract deals).
2. Give you money for nothing (you have to do something like volunteer your time).
3. Give you money up front.
ND does:
1. Offer support for athletes to earn money through NIL. Sometimes those opportunities can be pre-arranged and include $$ figures, like with FUND.
2. Give realistic estimates of the amount of money a recruit can be expected to make, which is generally up there with the bigger schools.
It means that ND is doing it the "ND Way" and not paying players to come here. They're giving opportunities to get paid if you want to take advantage of them.
And therefore, even if ND signs some huge deal with UA, I don't think they're going to just give the players that money. Doesn't seem like an ND thing to do.
We haven't been losing 5-star recruits the past 2 cycles because we refuse to let players make money, it's because we aren't giving them these huge contracts or "the bag."