If I'm UT, I don't want you anywhere near my money. This is about saving your cash cow. I cannot fathom allowing it to devalue any more than it already has.
I think we're well past worrying about appearances. If you're worried about that, take a gander at the field on Saturdays.
The "cash cow" delivers roughly $10 mil/yr into a $3.1B budget.
To break that relationship down, for an individual making $100k/yr, your "cash cow" would drop a whopping $0.03 into their pocket.
You seem to have your financial understanding backward. Bellmont is the one that could not pay its most recent capital debt payment. The university isn't in dire financial straits. Your "cash cow" is.
UT can have a football program without becoming Texas A&M. (Or, possibly not). There can be football at UT without having to turn the program over to a sociopath who would degrade the name, brand and reputation of the school from Day 1.
When Bellmont gets its financial house in order, begins again to be able to dependably make its debt payments, repays the deferred salaries it owes (yes, including to Tom Herman), and gets back on financial footing, then CDC can begin to make the case that he is unable to hire anyone ethical to lead the athletics programs. Until then, I think it is unreasonable for CDC (or anyone else) to demand a known sociopath be made the highest paid public employee in Texas.
The alumni were told to shut about ethics when Herman insisted the football team could not win unless Casey Horny was hired. Then the alumni were told to shut about about not wanting a felon who peddled controlled substances to minors on school grounds on the UT campus because the football could not win unless Leitao was on the team. Now, we are being told the football can't win without again going even deeper into the ethical sewer.
We've been told enough that we can't win unless we toss our ethics aside.
Maybe its about time to realize those who insist on wallowing in the ethical sewers just so the football team can win are not the ones we should be listening to.