I'm having a hard time with this parallel right now. NDSU went 21-11 with a loss in the 1st round of their conference tournament. Montana State went 15-18 and lost in the 2nd round of their conference tournament. We can, and have done better than that, while supporting football.I would be good with stepping down a tier provided we have a consistently winning team. Think of NDSU or Montana State but with a basketball team like those with Dembo. Leckner, Bailey, Davis Adams etc. .
Maybe I'm a contrarian, but even if we eliminated football in favor of basketball, I'm not confident that we'd be able to recruit (read: pay) the right players (and coaches) to make a splash.
In the last 5 years, could we have paid/recruited players away from schools like Creighton, Iowa State, and Iowa? I don't think so.