If he still goes first round, that's a lot of publicity and marketing that he's still providing for the university anyway.
We would pay to have 1 (or multiple) 1st round picks for all the social posts, media conversation, recruiting rep that it would buy us.
It's not the way we'd want to be paying for him. Obviously everyone wants him on the field. He probably wants to be on the field. He tore his ACL 9 months ago. Guys that come back in less than a year, just as good as they were before, are such an insanely small percentage. He's rehabbing on an appropriate schedule. Hubbs said that he hasn't had a practice with the team yet. He's at practice, but he's not in pads running around with everyone. He missed spring camp, summer workouts, fall camp. Even if he is cleared, he's miles behind. It's just unrealistic.
The next best thing is having him go in the 1st and we still get to brag about it. That's still money well spent. Maybe not the way we would have wanted it to happen, but that's still valuable to the program.