So I always get concerned when I start seeing responses of "he is out of our budget or we can't pay the price " comments because it seemingly turns into some sort of board truth that I would wager is not remotely accurate. On more than a few occasions board insiders have shared Nil is mostly not an issue BUT it's not unlimited either. Choosing not to over pay in the market to me is smart. For example I believe it was validated that we had met Edwards original asking price and then West Virginia came in and offered more is the story. Allot more. Syracuse deciding not to overpay the outlier number doesn't mean they couldn't have, it just means they wanted to spend different.
Well, let's look at it this way...
Last year, we lost Jesse (a tier 1 P5 center) because we didn't have a cogent NIL plan at the time to keep him.
In the portal, we (supposedly) were in the mix for Hunter Dickinson (another tier 1 P5 center) to replace Jesse.
We didn't get him.
Plan B was McLeod... a nice, complimentary P5 backup center.
We effectively replaced a starter with a backup.
Had we gotten Dickinson, there is a strong argument to be made we win enough games to get in the dance (especially since McLeod got injured anyhow.)
Also, there is the argument that we were never seriously involved with Dickinson and McLeod was plan A all along... which, of course, is not exactly inspiring.
These decisions have consequences... especially when the replacements aren't like-for-like and are actually a downgrade.
If you have to "overpay" to be competitive, is it really overpaying?