Like I said, we were competitive under Corbellis. We were often top 25 and made the NCAAs 20 times and the sweet 16 four times in 25 years. That is very competitive but does not compare favorably to other A&M women's sports. As has been said, maybe the support does not compare favorably to other sports either though. A&M volleyball's "situation" (academic reputation, budget, facility, resources, tradition, etc.) is definitely top 40 but probably not top 16, so the Corbellis were right on par for they "should" have been.
Certainly no need to fire a long-time beloved coach who runs a clean program that produces great young women
unless you are going to take it to the next level, and IMO the new hire is a downgrade. I don't think that's even debatable.
This is old, but interesting:
https://college-sports.texastribune.org/colleges/texas-am-university/It's hard to find volleyball info, but I think it's safe to assume no one outside of t.u. is spending $2-3M per year on volleyball. Also the bird was brought in at $450k and is probably up to over $500k. Crazy. Mark Weaver (W Tennis) makes about a quarter of that.
Laurie Corbelli was making $146K!The difference between volleyball and tennis is that when they ran off the tennis Corbelli (Kleinecke) they replaced him with back to back hires that came cheap and won big. 6 out of the program's 7 Sweet 16s have come since Kleinecke was fired and the team made the NCAA finals and was inches away from a championship. If we're going to punt venerable institution type coaches, let's hire superstars, not just young (and more expensive) versions of the same thing.
Not that it matters because A&M basically prints money, but it's the principle of it. You want A&M to spend more on it's program? Maybe stop overpaying mediocre and inexperienced coaches and either cash whip a stud (like baseball) or put some more effort into a smart affordable hire (tennis) and put the money into the program itself.