I'm not missing the point, I know the point incredibly well, more than you will ever know.
The point is, that was NOT the only reason to fire Beta Blake. You really don't know what happened within UM related to the Herbstreit story, the Echevarria/Fernandez delegation, and the decision to allocate more resources.
Again, the TIMING of Beta Blake's firing is highly related to signaling Mario. But there were several other powerful reasons to fire Beta Blake, not the least of which was the (belated) debunking of the fund-raising myth.