There are a few EXTREMELY rich families of donors, including the Hunt family that owns the Chiefs and FC Dallas, who have just promised to float the program and fund NIL at competitive levels, but I do not envy their athletic department staff. They're going to be begging, borrowing, and stealing for the better part of a decade to keep up appearances, and if the football team doesn't make some noise, the culture could get pretty toxic in University Park. They also have 30+ years of alumni who picked SMU despite sports not mattering and 30+ years of locals who found something else to care about.

TCU is constantly on a razor's edge for general interest, even with 20 years of being an excellent G5 and respectable P5 program. It's just such a crowded market. Winning will fix a lot of things, but winning at any sustained or impressive level been the missing part of the SMU equation so far.