The product on the floor for the past 8ish years hasn't exactly enticed any new doners either. I think there's a lot of TU grads who were part of the Steadman era where we had some decent basketball and football that are now coming into their prime employment years and would be drawn to donate if they were actually given a reason and shown that there money wasn't being wasted.
It always seemed in those years like we just needed to get over the hump, and something really special was going to take off (kind of like we've seen at SMU, Houston, or Wichita).... it just never materialized and the graduates lost interest during this long period of suck-i-tude.