Some of these schools' AD budgets are so out of whack it's a wonder we don't base leagues on budgets rather than things like attendance and enrollment #'s. I never understood why the NCAA bothered to equalize the number of scholarships but didn't do anything to remotely level the relative budgets (I'm sure that's a pipe dream, trying to put limits on a school's money). But even NFL teams have the salary cap in part to prevent teams from buying championships. One can argue either way how much a budget impacts win/loss percentage, but I did a comparison some years ago that did show this correlation for many of the long-standing big-time programs. I recall Texas and Ohio St being particularly disgusting, seeing how much money these academic institutions pour into athletic dept's. It's pretty clear that among other benefits, large budgets allow schools like Texas to buy out coaches over and over when they don't achieve the Mac Brown type results (ironic in that case, isn't it). And they can pay so much more for assistants. Just look at Oregon snatching Jim Leavitt out of our pocket with nothing more than a fatter paycheck (probably financed by Nike) if you want an example close to home. I can't really argue with Alabama/Clemson/ND/OSU success, but what a dreadful final four we had to watch again. Really wanted an outlier like Cincinnati or someone in there.