Well, at least our football team is better than Gonzaga's.
And yet where are we (& the MAC) wasting resources where it's more difficult to get national exposure? Football.
So Football is where we're wasting resources? What about hockey, soccer or any other program? If football goes away, do you think that money gets allocated to other sports? If an activity in a budget goes away, then that money goes away. The MAC has a TV contract because of football.
I would argue the MAC receives most of its exposure due to football. It has alumni who are stars in the NFL, major Bowl games, etc. You're competing against 120 schools instead of 350. The advent of the one-and-done has really impacted MAC basketball.
Again, the decision to support basketball is independent. Gonzaga invests in basketball because basketball brings in real revenue. Unfortunately, that is not the case in the MAC.
Thread derailment coming...
I think you're both right, but the long-term trends in football are not good. It's become an impossible race to even remotely keep up with the Power Five in football, especially long-term. Western Michigan was the best MAC team that I've ever seen, and an OK Wisconsin squad took them out. The whole program will likely fall back to earth this year. It's unsustainable.
Beyond that, football is slowly dying. They have not solved the concussion riddle and probably never will, which will lead to fewer kids playing, fewer fans watching and massive legal liabilities for the programs that soldier on. The entertainment wing has similarly reached the busting point of its bubble, with ugly long-term prospects. The systems that overinflated its value are falling apart. TV is changing and fewer and fewer people are paying for ESPN and the bloated cable packages that sustain both the D1 bluebloods and the bottomfeeders in the G5. Attendance is down, TV ratings are down. Investors look at long-term trends. As such, if football were a stock, it would be a sell in my book.