re: Do we have better NIL capabilities than people made it seem at first?

Yes. As much as I would like to pretend that all these recruits are just that in to what Brian Kelly is selling (and they are, NIL isn't all that matters), when you look at the recruiting class rankings and compare coaches salaries to them (a decent proxy for booster investment into a program), it's pretty obvious that LSU is a ~top 5 NIL program. If they really, really want to go hard into NIL we'll never be able to compete with Texas, Georgia, and A&M in a bid off, but it's high enough that other things start to matter more.