The only reason you need to hire your pals instead of people who send in an application is that everybody here is at best a volunteer and consequently always less professional and disciplined than the people you are comparing them to in your funny job market/major sports leagues analogies. It is way more useful that you know someone to whatever extent than that they manage to fill out the application form without drooling all over it if you want to judge how they will perform in any given position.
The whole nepotism accusation is pretty much as easy to make as calling everybody *****ing in this thread whining freeloaders who cannot be bothered to actually contribute to Graal in any significant way and instead pine for the presumably easy glory of a global staff position.