No need to agonize over this decision IMO. Rice is gonna Rice no matter what you do with your tickets.
The athletic budget is around $35M. Rice subsidizes most of that and IIRC ticket sales (across all sports, not just FB) account for maybe just 10%. Upticks and downticks in that number don't cause enough economic pressure to affect decision making. Rice doesn't run the athletic department with profit in mind, anyway; the ambition of our athletic program is driven by much larger, institutional-level concerns such as: What level of athletic program (starting with football) is it beneficial for a first-and-foremost elite academic institution to maintain? Or even appropriate to have?
Stanford, Notre Dame, Northwestern, et al., have answered those questions one way. UChicago, MIT, Caltech, et al., have answered another way. We, ahem, appear to be alone amongst our peers (unless we're now considering Tulane a peer
) in pursuing a wholly unsatisfying third way. To the extent you would like to influence
that decision making, I'd suggest (assuming a nine-figure donation is out of the question) writing emails or otherwise lobbying the powers that be at Rice. (And good luck with that.)
In the meanwhile, buy tickets and go to games -- or not -- as you wish. If you enjoy fall Saturdays on campus, great! If you like the MOB, if you like tailgating with friends, if you just love watching football no matter the level . . . if you can enjoy our games for what they are, and the fact that they are inconsequential, lower-division contests against schools we have nothing in common with does not detract from that, then why deny yourself those pleasures to send a message that will never even be felt? Heck, for that matter, if you want to go in a different direction coaching-wise, buy tickets so you can boo DB and staff - that is frankly more likely to be noticed than one more empty seat in a veritable sea of them.
Sorry to be so cynical, but 30 years of attendance and alumnihood have convinced me that to the extent Rice even notices ticket sales fluctuations, it interprets dwindling interest as justification to not upgrade the athletic program, and interprets rising interest as justification to stay the course . . . i.e., not upgrading the athletic program.