Maybe. Probably actually. But there is something to be said for the programs who are going all out right now. It sends a message to the rest of the college football world that we are committed to being a player here. It builds fan excitement. It keeps the media involved. Im not sure what message we are sending by being ultra frugal and promoting from within from a pretty disastrous program over the last 4 years.
It may not send the greatest message, if we're looking at it through the lens of an arms race. And that may be the game we want to play. But doing that would require us to either raise a ton more money to divert to escalating salaries (and not paying down our debt), and that might also make us more beholden to boosters, which would lead to more of the problems we seemingly encountered during this search.
IMO, the most important thing for us right now is not keeping up with the arms race - it's to get our athletic department back into the green, so we can sustainably compete in the arms race.
if Key stabilizes the program and gets us to consistent bowl eligibility - which I think he can do, with the right OC - thereby allowing us to sell some tickets and AD Batt to work on righting our financial ship...I'm convinced we'll be in a much better place the next time this whole coaching search thing comes around.
And who knows - Key could be the next Chan Gailey. Or the next George O'Leary. Or the next Bill Curry. All would be better than the current state of the program. And we could do a lot worse than having to worry about other programs coming in to poach our head coach, a la 'Bama.