I don't know why you would assume one source is wrong just because another source reports a different conclusion.They are wrong.
But one thing you would need to do with any source is make sure you take into account the fact that what the school kicks in to subsidize the athletic department is counted as revenue. That's not really revenue generated by the athletic program. It gets counted as revenue for the athletic program. But it's expense to the institution.
You can see what I'm talking about by going to http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/ ... /finances/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and looking at various schools. Let's take Tennessee as an example.
If you click on "Tennessee" you will see a breakdown of "revenues." Note that $11,434,056 of "School Funds" is counted as "revenues." If you delete that from the "revenues" total, the revenues minus expenses net for the school is NEGATIVE $10 million.
You mess around doing that for a while at that web site and you will quickly see that the overwhelming majority of athletic programs are net costs to their schools. They don't "make money." The schools are subsidizing them.
You can also do it kind of quickly at that web site by looking at the "total subsidy" column. What you see in the "subsidy" column is counted as "revenue" by the athletic departments.


