UND football can afford knee braces. They want to give the donors something tangible they can look at and say "hey I helped pay for those."
As for the REA scoreboard, it's paid for with REA money pilfered from UND. UND has no say in how the money is spent after the REA takes it.
Typically, REA returns between $500,000 and $1 million of UND's money to the school each year. If REA didn't take the $3-400,000 of football revenue, I'd anticipate they would simply return $3-400,000 less to UND each year....
1. UND football doesn't recruit against Big Sky teams. UND recruits against MVFC teams, most if not all of whom offer FCOA and pay their coaches more.
2. Volleyball is well-funded and has very nice facilities relative to our conference opponents.
But yes, culture certainly matters most.