We have never been a BAND school. We have one and I was part of the program but for Tech the band program has always been a very secondary program. NSU and even ULM have great bands because they really have schools of music and people go to those schools for those degrees. People come to Tech for engineering, business or something else and do band on the side and then some decide to pursue it. At both of those schools there really aren’t many other specialized programs for people to choose (yeah I'm taking a swipe).
As someone else said NSU has been in school since the 10th whereas we only had 3 days. At the same time, our upper classmen should have a stronger sound than they did. Yeah, our band could take more funding BUT the program would have to go through a major change to become stronger.