The academic world today is run by money. If you bring in big grants, the administration loves you. (In this case big means north of $300,000.) These - along with their indirect costs - will pay your salary and the salaries of several other people. If you don't have these grants, you're just another body.
This is an only slightly warped version of the truth at BIG institutions but it does not apply to math. There is no money in math and there has never been any money in math. I have never heard of any instance of hiring decisions in math depending on whether or not the person has a grant. Not to say it hasn't ever happened but it is certainly not the norm. (to nitpick a little more, math salaries are hard money i.e. they do not depend on whether or not you have a grant. So are salaries at most big universities in most disciplines, the exceptions are pure research places such as Scripps. Salaries at smaller places are always on hard money.) This not to say that mathematics programs are valued by administrators. For instance, administrators at Rochester tried to get rid of the math grad program.
Furthermore, few of the administrators have any idea of what Mathematics is about. They know what other scientists study - geologists know about rocks, chemists know about chemicals, astronomers look at the sky - your latest paper on motivic homotopy theory just leaves them scratching their head.
First thought is how much does ANY admin know about what's going on in their kingdoms. Just to randomly pick a few, are they up on the latest versions of String Theory or Queer Theory? No. They don't really know anything besides what the department heads tell them. Second thought is that this a conversation you're going to have with any random person you ever meet so why does it surprise you that it's going to happen in academia. ( Imagine being the person who developed Queer Theory and having to explain that to an admin)
The academic world is a great place at perhaps 200 colleges in this country. At the other 2000 or so, not so much.
Either the situation isn't nearly as dire as this or I just managed to land at of the magic 200 as I feel like I have a pretty sweet gig. I only have to be some place a couple hours a day and when I'm there I get to talk about a subject I love. (not to say that I don't enthusiastically participate in the age old teaching past time of complaining about my students).