All of the following is my opinion. I am not stating that it is the one and true way, that anyone else is wrong, I am simply laying out my vision or part of it. I can't say that I spend significant minutes thinking about these things, so much of this is basically off the cuff. Take from it what you will.
We can't know if it is possible to win a national championship without engaging in the arms race unless we try. We already have engaged in it to an extent, but my opinion is that we need not and should not be doing things like erecting a 100 million dollar facility for football, particularly 20ish years after the prior Taj Mahal opened.
Notre Dame should assemble the best coaching staff that it possibly can. It has taken some steps along that front, and I very much like Freeman, but he and his staff are not the best that could have been assembled. Hopefully they grow into that. Whether they do remains to be seen.
I believe that athletes for whom the new facility vs the Gug is a deciding factor likely will be challenges to recruit. Notre Dame should strive to have facilities that are sufficient to achieve the goal but it should not be necessary to go as far as is planned. Maybe something could be added to the Gug, or a dining facility built next to it. I'm not against some improvements where truly necessary, but I am against the continued sequestering and unnecessarily opulent facilities (that goes for the general student body as well).
There has been an arms race forever. It's gotten larger over time, but this is nothing new. Notre Dame used to forge its own path and stand for how things should be done. This isn't about yelling at the sun, wearing an onion on my belt, or talking about how things were back in nineteen dickety-two. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I would like to see Notre Dame stand for something (other than wasteful excess). I would like to see Notre Dame stop settling for mediocrity, in all things. I would like to see accountability at Notre Dame. I believe that the first step towards returning to a regular spot among the best teams in college football is to assemble a top notch staff. I am not convinced that we have done so. The jury is out on Denbrock, hopefully he surprises. Golden has been pretty good. Some of the other spots have been hit or miss. Freeman needs to insist that he be able to hire the best, then he needs to identify them and get them to join him. If he accomplishes that, the team will overachieve based on its talent, which will attract more talent. If the facilities are reasonably good then they will be a smaller factor in a given recruit's decision. If they are the make or break decision then Notre Dame may not be the place for them, and that's ok. But if a player knows that he is going to get the best coaching possible on his presumably desired path to the NFL, while also earning a degree from Notre Dame that he can make use of after his playing days are over, to me that's a very strong sales pitch.
If you made it through all of my rambling, congratulations, and have a good evening.