Agreed.
A good example is Alabama football. Following Gene Stallings retirement in the mid 90s, Alabama went through several coaches, first trying to hire from within with Dubose, then via the "mid major" route with Franchione and Mike Price, and finally back to a family hire of Mike Shula. Their program alternated between above average and terrible for nearly a decade. They never went out and got a superstar coach, until 2006. At that time Nick Saban was a superstar, but given his Dolphins job, required a whole bunch of money to bring in. Alabama signed him to an 8 year deal at 4 million/per. At the time it was an enormous contract for a college coach, so much more than anyone else was making. The rest needs no explanation. Alabama has seen a return on that investment threefold in donations, not to mention on field success and national notoriety, both with athletics as well as improving academic reputation over the last 10 years.
Wake is in a similar position now. The program has been down for a while now. There are two clear cut superstar coaches out there which are obtainable for a price. Those two are about as can't miss slam dunk as you can get. Everyone else on the list has question marks and would be much more of a risk. I would much rather open the checkbook to get Shaka or Marshall here than roll the dice to save 1-1.5 million on someone else.
