What is ailing UCD baseball ? Just in regards to Item 1, when I was at Davis in the late 90s, we had a great wrestling program with very little funding. Women's field hockey was pretty outstanding, also probably very little funding and support. Men's rugby and hockey were club sports and competed pretty solidly with top teams, if I remember correctly. I'm sure there are more examples. I know those were D2 days, but wrestling competed as a D1 program, and won an individual national championship in the early 2000s (Derek Moore).
Baseball's lack of success can't be due to a lack of funding or interest. I'm curious if Davis is too tough of an academic school for kids who have aspirations to play in the minor leagues after college. You can probably talk a kid in to playing football with the understanding that they will never play again after college, but they'll walk out the door with a very respectable degree. If a JC kid wants to continue playing baseball after college, and the degree isn't the primary goal, why would you go to Davis? Out of curiosity, what percentage of Big West athletes play a sport after graduation? Is there a way to quantify which sports offer the most post-college opportunities?
Anyway, just my 2 cents as someone who only watches MLB when the Giants are in the WS and only goes to 1 Giants game a year for my dad's birthday, and barely watches any of that game...