The question was how does SFA get that kind of student support for basketball. Given, that GCU has unbelievable student support for men's basketball, I think SFA could learn something from them. I do feel that, without football, men's basketball is the premier sport on the GCU campus and that plays a big roll.
However, if you feel that because SFA has fewer on-campus students and because it does not have the money that GCU has, SFA cannot get students involved in basketball. I'll take your word for it. I haven't even been in the state since 1989 much less Nacogdoches, so I'm clearly out of touch.
Since you brought it up, Regarding the Department of Education (DOE), GCU split the for-profit business arm from the university back in 2018. Both the Arizona Department of Revenue and the IRS of the United States recognize the new university entity as a non-profit. When Perdue bought Kaplan Online it changed the name and created a business arrangement between the non-profit university and the business services. That arraignment was approved by the DOE in 3 months. GCU has been trying to get approval for 30 months. Some legal experts believe the arrangement GCU has is the same as the one Perdue has (in fact that is why GCU did it that way). The University of Arizona is buying similar online company and the thought is they will set it up the same way Perdue did in order to get DOE approval. GCU filed a lawsuit against the DOE in February of this year. So now the courts will decide one way or the other.
I understand that the DOE is trying to avoid giving grants to all these for-profit universities just because they setup a non-profit entity but they may have backed themselves into a corner with the Perdue approval. Even though they made me uneasy sometimes when they were for-profit, I think GCU is a little different because it began life 60 years ago as a small Baptist university and when they sold and went for-profit they poured those huge profits back into the university. It is cheaper to go there than it is to go to the state universities and they haven't raised tuition in 13 years.
I don't have a dog in the fight and don't care how the case comes out but it should be interesting.