Big Daddy: As an intellectual undertaking, I understand the desire to separate football and evaluate numbers. I don't know how to do it -- and regardless of the fact that 80%+ of college football programs lose money I think you'll come back to the "status" argument made earlier.
But as a practical exercise, removing football from a debate concerning athletic spending seems akin to removing the meat from one of those huge fast food burgers and doing a nutrition analysis -- sure, you can do it -- but in the end it doesn't matter because the cholesterol and saturated fats laden slab of meat is pretty integral to most folks concept of what a "burger" is -- and football spending is pretty integral to most people's concept of what "athletic spending" is.
