VT did win by 36 after scoring 38 in the vault, but if you are going to take away their best event then you need to also take away the 18 that NC State got for putting four in the top six of the 100. Or alternatively, you could say all they needed to win from the vault was the sixth place guy. The rest was just running up the score.
These weren't cheap points because the rest of the conference doesn't bother. It would be one thing if they had two good guys and then were taking 4th-7th with vaulters at 14-15 feet. 16'7" is a quality vault for the minor places at a conference meet.
The issue at the major conference schools with no vaulters (NC State is far from the only one) is not money. As was said, vaulters will walk-on, and these fully funded programs will give at least a little money to anyone who is a conference scorer. And they certainly have no problem affording the poles and pits, which keeps lots of high schools from offering the event. But most of the schools don't have a coach with vault experience. The majority of small programs don't contest the vault seriously, and that's where coaches get their start. Those programs do have serious budget limits, a single coach may have do all the field events, or all the jumps plus sprints and hurdles. If they weren't a vaulter in college, they are very unlikely to become a competent vault coach in that environment, and if kid wants to walk on to vault at a school like that they are probably just told "we don't do that event." And it perpetuates its way up the system, as schools don't have vaulters because they don't have a decent vault coach, and so the coach never learns to be any better at it.
Maybe something like VT scoring 38 in the ACC vault changes things, but it's not obvious it will. It would if those points came from week performances, but even with a goo coach you can't just snap your fingers and make some 16-7 walk-ons appear.