I'm still not sure why you assume Maggard was surprised by how much a decent coaching staff would cost and forced into doing something he didn't want to do. He's not new to this game.
Maggard made it clear from the beginning that he was going after the best coaching staff our budget would allow and everything he's done to date indicates that he intends to elevate our program. Heck, he signed a new Softball coach with a higher salary than our baseball coach is earning! Again, Cajun fans all assumed he'd go to the P5 level for an OC or DC for this hire. Brent Pry was known to be in the running from Day 1 and appears to have been in the mix until the final hour.
I knew Maggard was serious about this hire when he canned Hud on 3 December triggering a $1.5MM buyout instead of waiting until after 1 Jan and dropping that number by $500,000.........that's $500,000 that could have gone to the new hire if he was so concerned about money. He obviously wasn't. My point is, I believe Maggard likely knew exactly how much money he had to play with......and if he exceeded that number late in the game, then it's because he had donors ready to back him and he knew it.
As for what our AD's consultant was doing from about Nov 27 until late Thursday night, I would hope he was working the phones on our behalf earning his pay as this was the most important hire in our history. And speaking of that consultant, one powerful theme that emerged from their work for us is that when the next round of media rights expire in a couple of years, they believe a significant reshuffling in college sports is likely to occur. In their view, under-performing G5's will fall behind the rest of the pack and the goal is to position Cajun athletics to not be one of those left in the dust.