I think I get what you are driving at, but to me you're trying to make a link that a majority of people who used to watch the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon bothered to write a check.
I get that big-time athletics--especially when it's successful--helps drive up contributions from the casual alum or giver. I don't know how many big checks it helps write.
You also have to understand that we are not promoting any grads who are "culture shapers" like journalists, musicians, writers, artists, actors, etc. We barely promote successful educators in the physical sciences. The only one who I can think of is James Kakalios.
We are suffering an identity deflation caused in part by focusing on R & D that has yet to bear visible and recognizable fruit. If we had prominent journalists, not talking point spewers, or even competent Public Relations people who came from the U, other institutions would be less capable of backhandedly deriding our school.
You have the doers and the talkers. We suffer from the abdication of educating undergraduate students at the expense of graduate students. The talkers, promoters, etc, do not come from graduate level students, they come from undergraduates. Closing the General College stifled the flow of people talking about the U who felt like they have a stake in the events there.
Look at local media. Where do most of the journalists/personalities come from? Other schools. We have people who went to high school here, but got a degree from out-of-state schools being "TV personalities/broadcasters" on our airwaves. These people have a bias of being lenient towards their out-of-state schools, but not towards local schools. Put another way, they cut slack for their out-of-state schools, but not for local schools. You will hear them put on the spot about an event at say, the University of Wisconsin, and they couch their remarks in "well, when I went to Wisconsin" and "I don't recall things like that in Madison." If someone said that about the U of M, it would be time to set up the pitchforks and torches stores with that person's face and name on them.
It is not just athletics where the U has decided it is okay to roll over and let others stomp on them. The U needs to take a firmer stand about it's autonomy in its' reputation.
