Your first two points are not correct.

And they are likely the most important these days.

On point one, for starters, I don't think there's any reliable support for the position that pre-NIL players were paid in significant amounts that made other offers clearly more desirable than NDs. And while ND players do fine in NIL, it's not clear that's an even playing field. Early signs were that ND was being beaten out in NIL against other elite schools. All information on this topic if murky. But I certainly haven't seen evidence that makes me confident ND is on an even playing field with the elite teams that are the only comparison that matters. The best evidence this is the case is that despite a greater staff commitment to recruiting from the top down and despite initially having elite classes when Freeman was signed, ND's recruiting classes took a hit when NIL opened up. ND was unable to sign verbal commitments from the kind of guys that Kelly could never get verbal commitments from in the first place. The result is that, despite great initial enthusiasm on the recruiting trail from Freeman, his classes are not much different from the bulk of Kelly's. And now there is no longer an upward trend for future classes. Unlike Freeman's first couple classes that were great early and then lost his five stars, his next class is notably worse than the past couple and is only relying on raw numbers for its early ranking. If that class closes like the last couple classes closed, it will likely drop out of the Top Ten.

ND is still likely at a disadvantage with transfers because it has more restrictions than others in bringing in players. In a grad transfer only world, that rule helped level the playing field for ND. But in an undergrad free transfer world, ND can't bring in the numbers that other teams can in order to fill gaps as efficiently. Undergrad business majors cannot transfer in and expect to be on track to graduate, greatly limiting the pool.

I don't disagree with the other points. But I don't find them particularly instructive. There was great institutional commitment to ensure Kelly succeeded. Yet he didn't.

I don't think anyone should take the position that ND can't win a title. But I see no evidence that ND is structurally better positioned to do so now.