I disagree. If you are spending $9M on the HC (#11 top paid) and $2.15M on your DC (#4 top paid DC) a fan base should expect top 10 results. I assume they have a top 10 NIL budget. I don't know.
I'll compare that to BOC who is now the second highest paid HC in college baseball. He will need to host most years and make it to OMAHA "most of the time" to be worth what we are paying him.
Lastly, I hear you. OM has truly left us in the dust in a lot of ways since LK arrived. Maybe it's worth the overpaid salaries. The thing about LK is that he has completely turned his life around off the field. He would have been fired if he had not been in media friendly Oxford his first 2 years there.
I'd say they're getting what they are paying for. Just like MSU, they will have to overpay for certain things. I don't know what they are spending on NIL and how sustainable it is, but if it's sustainable, then they are doing great for what they are doing. Any year they are still in the playoff discussion in the last couple of weeks of the season is successful for them. With the expanded playoffs, they will need to make it some.
I don't know if they're particularly good this year. Beating but not dominating UK and Arkansas probably doesn't spell a typical playoff team. But they have LSU, UGA, and OU as the only games really of note. UF, USCe, and MSU are all presumably going to be within spitting distance of UK and Arkansas, so plenty of places to misstep, but if they win those and go 9-3, that might get them in the playoffs this year. Or probably better for them, knock off one of those three so they have at least one good win and then have a misstep against somebody else.