That’s true to a certain extent, but the big-time college football powers are self-financing, for example I went to and am a fan of the University of Florida, they bring in enough revenue to pay for all the scholarships, build new facilities, and pay for all the other sports that are being subsidized, in fact most of the teams in power 5 college football conferences are self-financing, certainly the teams in the SEC are.
They try but very few of the big-time university football\basketball programs make money. I don’t have the articles or links on this computer but even I was surprised by the programs that in the red.
Ok, I found an article that pretty much repeats what the other articles on my other computer say.
From the article below ...
“....
For the NCAA, they define self-sufficiency (aka profit) as revenues (not counting university subsidies, student fees, or government support) exceeding expenses.
So using this pretty reasonable definition of revenues vs. expenses, do college athletic departments make a profit?
No.
Not even close.
This week, USA Today released their annual analysis of athletic department revenues and expenses (they do yeoman’s work every year putting this together). According to their analysis, just 24 of 230 public Division I universities made a profit.
That’s 10.4%.
Perhaps even more striking is that all 24 schools came from four athletic conferences: Big 10, Big 12, SEC, and the Pac-12. Even as a so-called power, the ACC did not have a school that made a profit although N.C. State came close losing only $165,000.
.....”
https://higheredprofessor.com/2015/05/28/do-college-athletic-departments-make-a-profit/