[2006alum]

Then where is all this money coming from?

Also from what I've seen the various subsidies and such are accounting gimmicks, but I don't feel like diving into this since this issue is clearly two sides yelling past each other, discussion is pointless.

Again, what money -- or at least, what profit? Yes, the NCAA is a "billion dollar operation", and in 2015 (the latest I could find) the total revenue from FBS bowl games generated was $509 million. However, the costs of funding 460,000 NCAA athletes per year isn't cheap, and most all of the NCAA money is redistributed to students through scholarships and direct support and to colleges through basketball performance and championships distributions. And consider how much is spent on coaches, AD staff, facilities, travel, sales and marketing, scholarships, tutors, living expenses, insurance and legal, and so on. 

If you divide $1.5 billion by 460,000 athletes, then the total revenue generated by the NCAA and FBS schools combined is $3,260 per athlete. Which means all the other money to fund college athletics must come from the schools themselves in the form of apparel partnerships, tickets and advertising, and alumni donations, and from state, local, and federal governments in the form of subsidized financial aid, scholarship assistance, property tax waivers, non-profit operations status, and charitable giving deductions. 

And here's some data broken down by average per school - as you can see, most schools spend more on sports than sports operations alone generate in revenue, which means it has to all be offset somewhere. And it is almost certainly the case that some bowl game execs, NCAA execs, etc., are enriched by fat salaries. But if you look at Fortune 500 executive compensation, I see no reason to think that a purely "market"-based system solves any of those problems, and it adds many other ills to the system.

My biggest frustration with all the armchair critics of the current system is that most people lack specific data to back up their sweeping assertions about how much profit there is in college sports, and the data actually paint a very different picture about just how uncompensated most student-athletes are.

[2006alum]

Then where is all this money coming from?

Also from what I've seen the various subsidies and such are accounting gimmicks, but I don't feel like diving into this since this issue is clearly two sides yelling past each other, discussion is pointless.

Again, what money -- or at least, what profit? Yes, the NCAA is a "billion dollar operation", and in 2015 (the latest I could find) the total revenue from FBS bowl games generated was $509 million. However, the costs of funding 460,000 NCAA athletes per year isn't cheap, and most all of the NCAA money is redistributed to students through scholarships and direct support and to colleges through basketball performance and championships distributions. And consider how much is spent on coaches, AD staff, facilities, travel, sales and marketing, scholarships, tutors, living expenses, insurance and legal, and so on. 

If you divide $1.5 billion by 460,000 athletes, then the total revenue generated by the NCAA and FBS schools combined is $3,260 per athlete. Which means all the other money to fund college athletics must come from the schools themselves in the form of apparel partnerships, tickets and advertising, and alumni donations, and from state, local, and federal governments in the form of subsidized financial aid, scholarship assistance, property tax waivers, non-profit operations status, and charitable giving deductions. 

And here's some data broken down by average per school - as you can see, most schools spend more on sports than sports operations alone generate in revenue, which means it has to all be offset somewhere. And it is almost certainly the case that some bowl game execs, NCAA execs, etc., are enriched by fat salaries. But if you look at Fortune 500 executive compensation, I see no reason to think that a purely "market"-based system solves any of those problems, and it adds many other ills to the system.

My biggest frustration with all the armchair critics of the current system is that most people lack specific data to back up their sweeping assertions about how much profit there is in college sports, and the data actually paint a very different picture about just how uncompensated most student-athletes are.