Good post Pounder. As mentioned, I don't have an issue with the criticism of our move. What I find mildly shocking (and mostly entertaining) are the narratives completely irrelevant to our move. Success at the JV level isn't a metric as shown by recent FBS additions who had little to no success in JV. Ironically the fact that NDSU, who dominated JV for 15 years, has to pay a hefty entry fee to gain an FBS invite tells you all you need to know about the value of success wrt an FBS invite.
When we submitted our FBS Indy application last summer, the reason for not allowing us to move up was not having an invite from an FBS conference. None of the other narratives (funding, success) were ever given as a justification by the NCAA to decline our waiver because they are either irrelevant (success) or we met the requirement (funding). We were lacking an FBS invite and Dr. Wood went out and got one and the pundits are big mad he didn't fail.