Jackdad, your points about loyalty and the portal are spot on however, I still would see basketball as the sport that an SFA could most likely get conference championships and into National tourneys on a somewhat regular basis.
It is extremely unlikely that SFA MBB will ever become the next Gonzaga that some of us dream of but is the most likely sport to give us National exposure if that is what we seek.
Football will always exist here ( as long as it does in college football) but doubtful to ever be huge beyond perhaps regionally, if we start winning regularly which SFA never has in football history.
Baseball is treated as a stepchild and just not taken seriously here. Woman's softball and soccer seasons are up and down. Golf, tennis, beach volleyball will never bring revenue but likely cost the least to the budget.
Bowling, our 2 Natty sport, is successful but largely unknown. Women's volleyball seems to be picking up steam around the country and we have a great coach and a lot of wins at our level of conference play but would even more money get us in position to truly be equal with the UTs and Nebraskas of volleyball, I don't think so.
Women's BB at SFA has a long history of success and one of the few NCAA schools with over 1,000 wins. The days of the Ladyjacks being ranked in the top 25 are long gone once the Big schools starting putting tons of. money into the sport. That said the Ladyjacks are still successful in what they do, but does WBB raise huge amounts of revenue--unlikely.
I suppose SFA could drop all sports and save that money.
In my view, SFA should just stay the course in funding athletics. Do their best to fund all the sports and try to be as competitive as possible in each sport that they fund. As with most Universities, success will come and go in each sport. Ride the highs and live through the lows, as we do now.