I gave for nearly 20 years. Spent thousands and thousands on travel/airfare just to go to home games.
I made a sizeable five-year commitment to my other alma mater this spring after that decision for the first time since I graduated in '97, so I'm not going to be itching to give to MT. I need to see either sustainable change in culture or a change in people before I will give again. And what makes you think they will make a change next year if they wouldn't this year? What if he goes 18-13. They'll be like would you look at that marvelous turnaround. That's three + .500 seasons in the past four years.
The issue is not about that one decision. It's that they aren't actually making decisions consistent with what they claim. You can't say we're here to win championships when you hired Mason and then turn around a few months later and retain a coach no other school that's actually trying to win championships would keep. We have a culture at this university of good enough for govt work where the "leadership" attacks and admonishes the fans for demanding more than mediocre. How ungrateful we all are to not see how well they've done at being consistently average. Remember as Rick always said winning is hard. So, who is willing to do the hard work? Well, the tennis people are. WBB. I see flashes of it with the new FB regime, so I'm generally hopeful there.
While I respect the individual coaches and programs that are bucking the trend of this institution's culture, I believe for us to excel (at least the way I would like to see) is where that culture is established at the top and it filters down to each program and if your program fails in spite of that winning culture being instilled well then - that's on you as the head of that program - and we'll make a change and find someone who will fit that culture. At MT we retain average and bad coaches because THAT IS the actual culture that is instilled from the top.
If you want a perfect example of this look to the east over in Knoxville where in spite of multi-million dollar athletic budget they squandered a decade or more with piss poor leadership. Look at what happened there since they removed the dead weight at the top and instilled Randy Boyd as the President and Danny White as the AD. Tennessee is now consistently a top 10 team in football, basketball, and baseball. They had a 60%+ win pct womens BB coach but that didn't fit their culture so they made a change there. The baseball team is currently #1 in the nation. Softball #2 in the nation. Tennis too? Yeah, top 10 advanced to super regional. The point is not to suggest that MT is ever going to be top 10 across multiple sports but look how bad UT has been at most everything for the 10 to 15 years prior to these changes. Even with all that money they were nothing but a terribly run university and athletics dept. There's a lesson in that for me. Which is don't give more money to bad leadership. It never leads to better decisions or outcomes.