I do believe that some of these profits need to stay within the athletic department to build a reserve fund, etc., like any other organization would. I agree that student fee money should not go to sports teams making profits in and of themselves, but I don’t mind if they go to programs that aren’t.

If at least a good portion of the profits are used to fund scholarships for the general student body who aren’t athletes. In the case of our three Division I service academies (Air Force, Army, Navy), any profits should be given to charity for injured servicemen and women, because everyone who goes to Colorado Springs, West Point, or Annapolis has a full scholarship on the taxpayers and rightfully so.

To answer the question here that you put up, “Why do we expect any division of a public university to be a profit-making entity? Doesn’t that undercut the entire point of having a university in the first place?”, I’ll say this for any college/university, public or private. For any institution, it should make money if it’s going to be sustainable. If a non-profit isn’t making “profits”, it’s going to be unsustainable at a certain point which will lead to sports getting cut. And this same concept is used as to why tuition rises at ridiculously high rates in colleges.

One thing I think would be best is for the NCAA to do away with FBS football completely, and have an independent profit making entity run the schools in the who choose to do so. This way, they can set their own rules on recruitment and scholarships. They also can pay players a stipend this way since the NCAA isn’t running big time football anymore. Students should also be allowed to work for the football program so some women can benefit from it, such as the student managers, publicists, game ops staff, etc., since the athletes are pretty much all men. The weird issue again would be Air Force/Army/Navy because everyone going there has a full scholarship, the military mission of the schools, and I don’t think they’d allow football players to get more money than the standard pay all the students get, but I’d say here that this means a bigger check for charity. The other option for the Service Academies is drop down to FCS football, but I doubt it given the tradition at the three schools. Not a perfect solution, but it frees up a lot of NCAA mens scholarships and will even out the sex disparity between NCAA sanctioned mens and womens scholarships since the female representation of colleges is continuing to rise, which is not a good thing, but that could be another debate in and of itself.

I also believe that college sports, especially football and men’s basketball, are the public faces of the schools that are in the big time conferences. It may not be the soundest way to improve a school academically, but as a kid growing up when I was thinking about college, I did want to go to a school with a good sports team too, and I’ll argue that this is how many, if not of us get introduced to colleges which is watching football or basketball. The popularity of the football or basketball teams and their success in the BCS or the NCAA tournament can drive up applications in the short and long terms, which mean better students coming to the school. This happened with George Mason University in Virginia after the 2006 Final Four run. In addition, alumni are more likely to donate and those who donate may donate more money which will mean more money to keep good professors and more endowed scholarships for non-athletes. All of that helps the schools out academically in the long run. Sure, academics alone should be what drives up donations and they alone should be the reason why students pick a certain place, but the reality is that it isn’t the case, but at least sports and their popularity can help a college’s academic mission indirectly through the ways I’m mentioning.

What counts as revenue and what counts as expenses?