I'm in total agreement with your take on the academic level of ETSU. There again is the lack of ETSU promoting its self. Many, many people still think that ETSU is a teachers college when in fact they have some of the best programs in the state and country.

Fun raising is a tough gig at ETSU. ETSU does not have the same pull with their fan base or as large a fan base as other universities. With sports programs being the 'front porch' of a University, ETSU's 'front porch' has been in need of a major renovation. Thankfully the current President is trying to do improve all aspects of the University.

As your are seeing first hand, the difficulty of raising 9 million matching monies for a PAC and 25 million for a football stadium is a tall task. It would take in the neighborhood of an additional 90 million for a basketball arena and to expand the currently proposed football stadium. With fans and some on this board not supporting the current fund raising efforts, who would pledge the additional funds. Heck, they don't want to pay for tickets at today's prices, let alone pledging additional monies for facilities.

Got to sites of the aforementioned universities and take a look at their facilities. Unfortunately they are way ahead of ETSU.

The blame for ETSU's lack of recognition as a very good academic university and ETSU's lack of providing first class sports facilities, IMO, has been the poor leadership at the top levels for many years.

It takes strong academics, a strong money fan base and first class facilities, ETSU only has one of those