Funny because we always complained about life after football season was over, as we had no stellar basketball team. If I am not mistaken, UWM had a football team. However, back in 1974, the NCAA required that all sports play at the same level. As many basketball schools were; UWM was DI in basketball, and DIII in football. I am surprised that your administration did not chose to go the non-scholarship route (ala Valpo and Butler).
I am sure you realize that football is an expensive and "tricky" sport. At YSU, we fund every other sport through football. We are one of only a very few DI schools that do not have to draw from a our general fund for athletics. We sell 15k to 20k seats a game, have 26 corporate loges, and make good ad revenue. This is a football town, and we can get far more donors for football than basketball. However, we were a basketball school up until the 70's. Since joining the Horizon, we have been able to share in revenues that we did not have since we left the OVC. For quite some time, YSU was a basketball independent ...or in the Mid-Con. Either way we saw no conference revenue.