Hostility? No. I may not like the way you talk about the basketball program, but, we need as many passionate fans/supporters as we can get. Now, do I find it irritating that you refuse to read the room, listen to any logic or look at this in a realistic manner and am I having a little fun at your expense? Most definitely!
In all seriousness, though, almost everyone on here would love to have football if we could guarantee there would be no negative impact on Basketball, but, the possibility of football at Mason is dead for the foreseeable future and I think you are refusing to see the reality of the situation. Here are some of the reasons I remember just off the top of my head:
Brad was the last shot at doing football until something changes in the landscape at Mason/Fairfax/College Funding/VA Law. He and Green (LOL) failed to raise any interest or money.
Mason's history of failing to rise to the occasion on things related to athletics: OCM situation, CKE situation as two prime examples. Whether this is incompetence or on purpose is debatable.
Inability to fund our athletics programs at a top level. If memory serves me, we are middle of the pack in A10 basketball funding. I wouldn't be surprised if we are even worse when it comes to other programs.
We seem to be unable or unwilling to raise large amounts of money for athletics projects (see practice facility that is two decades in the making...).
By VA law, we can't raise student fees for this type of venture.
Look at the costs from the article Pablo posted. Those costs are from over a decade ago, so at least triple them due to the level of price inflation since then. That is why I throw out a number like $500M to get a football program started and fund it without impact to Basketball.
Possibly the one time I'll ever quote (paraphrase at this point) TOC in a positive manner. "If Mason wants to spend tens to hundreds of millions of dollars so that fans can throw 8 tailgate parties a year, I'll be happy to oversee it."
Is our athletics department on a better path now, I believe and hope so. President seems to be focused on it and we seem to have hired a good AD. I will caution, though, that I have had this feeling in the past as well to be disappointed at a later date.
This will be my last post on the topic football for the time being. This is basketball season. Let's save the dead horse (
) topics for the off season.