How much are we talking?

[ucffinally]

I probably haven't been reading news about the UCF football as closely as I should, but a sentence in The Athletic caught my attention. It said that the amount that SMU spent to earn the "death penalty" back in the 1980s was a relatively small. Using today's dollars, the writer speculated that "A $1.6 million NIL war chest probably wouldn’t fund the needs of a mid-level Big 12 program today." Since UCF wants to be more than a mid-level program, has anyone publicly estimated how much UCF will need to field a top-level Big XII team? Are we anywhere near that for the upcoming season?