Your observation and the one commented on are good take on the "upfront"

During the Kelly Era seems like we have done a solid job of acquiring the "resources" to make us BCS competitive but retention has been a bit of a disaster particularly for the most promising recruits (BTW not those who left early or moved on because they were not likely to get playing time). If the program worked right we would always have a solid cadre of 5th year players plus something like 20 seniors ... pretty much has never happened ... we have played some FR because there was a talent gap not because they were too good to sit.

Sort of off the radar in the last couple of years noticed we have hired some folk to work closely with the players to help them better "acclimate." I think of them as "retention specialists" hopefully drawing on all the resources ND has to keep them "on track." Seems like this is working as we now seem to have some kind of coherent red-shirting program (that doesn't officially exist) so we can reload to fill losses with players who have program experience (including the weight room).

Aside: like several posters agree there are recruits out there that essentially always are going to wind up with our prospective BCS competitors so we always have that hill to overcome to even get where we did this year.
If we want to level the playing field (I don't think the administration would make this a top school priority) something really "out of the box" would need to be done - example: opening a prep school like IMG or what the Naval Academy has.