At the root of their issue is that for all the money, public and private, used to upgrade facilities (primarily football) they have seen little increase in revenue created by that capital investment. They are averaging about the same for home games that they were a decade ago and that is with being the best football program in the conference over the past decade. They averaged less than 7,000 per home game in 2019, and they likely are going to have drastically fewer in attendance for the spring season. With all that success they sit fourth fiddle to Idaho, Washington and Washington State on Saturdays. In all reality the perception is that Eastern is more Central Washington or Whitworth than it is similar to its Division 1 partners in the state. For all their success in all sports, they can't translate it into consistent outside financial support from the community (ticket sales), boosters and advertising dollars. It isn't a poorly run business per say, but rather suffers from being perceptually in the region as being an inferior good no matter how high quality that good is.
Eastern is more Sacramento State or even Idaho State in regards to financial dependence on State monies, than it is Montana, Montana State or Weber State where it is competitively. For all the money the football program spends (all do), they just don't generate the type of money to balance the budget. The state of Washington, good or bad, has had little tolerance for its schools not balancing their athletic budgets. That it is having the same conversation Western Washington had almost a decade ago is telling. What I gather, is their shortfall is chronic or could be chronic and as such they needed to outlay a consultant firm to figure out whether their current budget issues can be rectified within the constraints of their current financing structure. They likely don't have a cash cow like Idaho State did with Jared Allen and Meador family to bail them out their predicament.
Montana on the other hand, had conversations as early as last spring about how each program and the department as a whole was going to survive a covid season (without football). The football program was obviously the cash cow to the whole department and at least one thread of the spring cancellation was the negative impact a 1/4 full WaGriz would have on the overall budget. Rather than run huge deficits because football is so expensive, the end benefit of not playing this spring (beyond its extended spring drills) is that it further helped the department manage the shortfall. There are others that can attest to this moreso than I, but the push from the GSA and athletics for donations in the late fall/early winter was to further close the gap to help over come the additional impact of scholarship demands this year and into the next. My understanding, is the department is in reasonable financial health with their austerity measures starting last spring that carried into the this school year for all programs. They are notoriously tight lipped, but my understanding that whatever budget deficit they have this year they feel confident with a full slate of home games and a money game next year with some continue austerity measures, the department could be in the black next year with no long term deficits they need to right.