Control. They want to keep NDFB as a subsidiary of the University system as a whole, which means they're not willing to treat it like a separate business that happens to benefit the University.
This is where the bullsh!t about us forming a new Ivy League comes from. Swarbrick and Jenkins look at a program like Stanford, see it spending 4-8% of it's total budget on the athletic department, and feel they have to do the same to keep the tail from wagging the dog. Meanwhile, all the programs we're hoping to compete with for titles have blown the tops off their AD budgets. The latter is unsustainable and has obvious problems, but we're currently trapped between incompatible models of what NDFB should look like.
Hopefully Freeman can thread the needle and convince the admin that it's possible to spend big enough to win without compromising our core values. I think it's possible, but lots of people on the BoF don't.
