I'm not seeing how the two are related. Yeah, I don't expect to recruit in the top ten with or without NIL. But recruiting around 35th should be very attainable. The fact that we're not doing it is on this staff. There are some oddities ahead of us that are probably NIL-related. Northwestern being one of them. But why can't we do better than Cincinnati, Kansas State, Iowa State, Duke, Wake Forest, Arizona, BC, Colorado, etc.? And that's even giving a pass to teams like Purdue, Maryland, Minnesota, etc. that would also be ahead of us if we lost these two, because I assume people would just assume they're funneling money to recruits through their respective conference payouts (which haven't even increased all that drastically yet).
And regardless, I'm not interested in having a coach who makes us say, "Ahhhh, so that's why we suck at this." Either get someone in here who can recruit well in this current environment or drop down to the FCS and go have a rock fight with Robert Morris or Duquesne.