No complaint dominates my email inbox like the wide umbrella of NIL and money in college athletics.

There’s a general mistrust or lack of understanding of how it all works.

That’s fair because it’s all purposely hard to understand and, while it’s more in the open than the old bagmen’s black market, understanding how the money flows is confusing.

Your alma mater begs for your cash but who’s to say where it goes?

So it’s understandable that breeds mistrust and a spiral into flushing a lifetime of fandom in the void.

Now add the looming infusion of revenue-sharing cash and the economic impact of the $20.5 million that’s set to join the NIL equation.

Where’s it all going?

What does it take to build a winner?

And how much do quarterbacks cost?

We’re starting to get a little insight into those questions — answers that create more questions — but still might help with the understanding of this new world.

Or, perhaps, drive fans further away.

Georgia athletics director Josh Brooks became one of the first administrators at a major school to reveal its plan to distribute that revenue among the school’s athletics programs.

It should come as no surprise that 75% of that money ($13.5 million) will go to football. That brings in the majority of the revenue to distribute so it only makes sense. Men’s basketball gets 15% or $2.7 million while women’s hoops gets 5% or $900,000. The others get the remaining 5%.

All of this requires the final approval of the House vs. NCAA settlement, expected to come in April.

Conventional wisdom says Georgia’s competition in the SEC would use a similar breakdown with football getting something in that $13.5 million range.

How much does it cost to build a champion?

Well, 2024 titlist Ohio State famously spent in the neighborhood of $20 million in the pre-revenue sharing era when it was fueled only by the NIL collectives. Alabama fans are familiar with that given the fact the Buckeyes poached players like star safety Caleb Downs, 5-star quarterback Julian Sayin and center Seth McLaughlin.

A collection of 13 anonymous coaches and personnel staffers speaking to The Athletic offered some insight into the budgeting and allocation of those funds. In a story published Wednesday, these unnamed head coaches, positional coaches, general managers and scouting directors explained how some of the sausage is made.

Coach 8, a general manager at a Power 4 school, offered the highest dollar amount in his projection to build a competitive team in their undisclosed league.

“$40-$50 million,” he told The Athletic. “That’s where I think it’s going to go.”

That’s well north of the $13.5 million allocation through the revenue-sharing model released by Georgia. It would take some creative NIL work, especially given the proposed new guardrails that would subject deals to a clearing house, but that’s double-plus what Ohio State allegedly paid to stock its 2024 roster.

Other coaches projected lower totals. A Power 4 GM said a championship-level roster is possible at $20 million. Another Power 5 head coach said $15 million would make them competitive in their conference.

The per-player numbers these anonymous coaches listed were also interesting. A top-tier quarterback would be in the $1.3 to $1.4 million range, a Power 4 director of player personnel told The Athletic. Receivers could fetch as much as $1 million down to $200,000 or $300,000 “on the low end,” a Power 5 receivers coach told the publication.

The story from two top-notch reporters — Antonio Morales and Sam Khan Jr. — offers all kinds of insight into the odds and ends. And while I know some balk at the idea of unnamed sources speaking without accountability, it’s the only way any of these trade secrets could see the light of day.

Account for the possible gamesmanship within these figures but it’s as close as we’re getting to a budget for how these moves are made.

You’re certainly not getting a line-item spreadsheet from your favorite NIL collective.

And it’s unclear how much any transparency would be required under the terms of the settlement, so we’re going to have to take these nameless coaches at their word.

Will that insight make any of this more tolerable for fans on the fence?

More willing to donate to the cause?

Time will tell.

This chapter of college athletics is still in its infancy and there’s still so much to learn and decode.

But the more we can understand, the easier it is to pick the side of the fence we’ll occupy moving forward.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.