Ah. I see. I think you're saying it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of winning games, vs what I'm saying in that it matters for people who want to argue about it. I'd say the amount does matter, but isn't the end all be all. 22 million doesn't guarantee a championship but only 10k probably guarantees you won't get one either.
To me it all comes down to this. Some on here, maybe even most, think winning a championship is easy peasy. Just back the Brinks truck up to Nate Oats, the top 12 players in the recruiting class, and profit! It's so simple a cave man can do it and Barnhart is an idiot because he can't. (I don't like Barnhart but it's because of how he handles contracts, not necessarily because of his hires).
Then you have posters like you and myself, who believe that winning championships is much more nuanced than that. There are many variables that go into it and it is absolutely not easy. Pope may not work out but I want to make sure we know why, and for certain before we move on. Does he have everything he needs to compete? Is year one the real coach Pope or year two? But others don't want to hear that and when you tell them, you get called a bad UK fan, as if their admonishment actually means anything.
I agree with every single word of that.
Going back to the 20M roster conversation though, it ends up the same as my extensive research about roster construction. If you engage with hypotheticals that can’t be proven, you’ll end up with entirely untestable opinions just banging into one another. I’ll give an example:
Random Message Board Troll: Pope has a 20M roster and he’s 10-6. If (insert coach name here) had that kind of NIL money, we would have a far better record?
^ This is entirely untestable. It is a hypothetical, which is fine in logical debate, but it is baseless. There is no way to know what any coach would do with a 20 million roster in college basketball, because we have never seen anyone have one until this year. None of that is to say that NIL money doesn’t matter — obviously it does. I’m sure if we had a line chart showing every team’s NIL spendings, we would see correlation between NIL spendings and win percentage. The problem is many fans do not understand the difference between something being directly caused and correlated. So, you end up arguing with someone’s feelings. “I feel like Bruce Pearl would win with a $22M roster.” Well, how do you know that? You certainly do not know that based on experience because Bruce Pearl has never had a $22M roster. What they are doing is creating a premise (i.e. money equals wins) and assuming their own premise in their conclusions without testing it. Now, on the other hand. This is the same argument someone would use to justify the hiring of an unqualified candidate:
I feel like if you gave the resources and brand power of Kentucky to (insert coach name here), their record would be much better and they would achieve (insert theoretical result).
^ Well, maybe — but debating that really just means “what I would expect in an alternate reality where my condition is true” versus “what I would expect in an alternate reality where your condition is true.”
This is actually the very reason why I won’t debate people who play the following types of games regarding my years of roster data:
“So, you’re telling me that you wouldn’t add 5-6 more wins by inserting “so and so” player’s name into this roster.”
^ Entirely hypothetical and pointless because it can’t be tested. Also, the person posing such a question likely isn’t considering every factor of team chemistry, role, fit, style etc. even in their own hypothetical.
All that said, you hit the nail on the head about something we both share. We would both like closely examining the “why” behind a lot of things and that’s the driving force behind many of the posts. And that leads to a lot of misunderstanding about the intentions/purpose and standpoint.
