Here's the other thing about Minnesota.
More than probably any other Big Ten school, a lot of students live off-campus (and I don't mean just not in the dorms, but rather around the metro area) and commute. Those students aren't involved in campus life as someone in a smaller city like Iowa City or Lincoln would be where the college is the center of everything. The U also has a large number of international students who aren't going to be involved in traditional campus activity.
For those students, college is like a job - somewhere you go during the day to do your work, and then you leave it behind at the end of the day. If you view your college like that, you're not going to be likely to donate significantly to the school after graduation, either to athletics (which you didn't care about) or even the school as a whole. There isn't that deep seated identity with your school that exists at somewhere like Michigan, PSU, Notre Dame, or many SEC schools. At places like that, tens of thousands of alumni come back EVERY WEEKEND in the fall for football games. Some from thousands of miles away. That will never, ever happen here.
Combine that with the view among many high school kids that Gopher sports are not "Cool." That was the view when I was in high school 20 years ago (nobody wore Minnesota stuff - it was always USC, Duke, UNC, Florida State etc.) and from talking to people, that hasn't changed. If people don't grow up loving a program, it won't be ingrained in them to care enough to donate should they become wealthy.
