The money gap feels like karmic payback for the “the average GT grad makes $X a year” video screen graphics at games
It's the output of an institutional process that for decades droned on and on that academics are meaningful, and athletics are not. Our students and faculty for decades were fully imbibed in that value statement. It was institutional tunnel vision and now that piper is playing a pretty somber tune. However, GA Tech can still be quite relevant in college football, just likely not for the MNC hunt annually. Ask yourself, though, how many programs that HAVE banged that drum loud and long are rarely, if ever, relevant in the MNC hunt.
Seems to me that the more salient issue today is: Granted that we pay our coaches handsome salaries to coach our SA's, how much more ought we to pay them to produce teams that perform at exceptional levels? TAMU is the poster boy for money not buying love.