Is it a good thing that universities, who hold an implicitly benevolent, non-profit societal role, should also have such high profit margins on their "student"-

Is it a good thing that universities, who hold an implicitly benevolent, non-profit societal role, should also have such high profit margins on their "student"-players? If the football team is bringing in the dough to fund a big chunk of the operating expenses, but aren't being fairly compensated, then the universities are exploiting those students for profit. What I don't see is how universities can use this same logic to justify using their sports teams to fund their academic operations. This pattern sounds familiar, where else have I seen it, oh yeah: the rich should pay for the poor, because they are lucky enough to have more. (I actually believe this, and I'm just using parallel logic). A few student athletes will win the lottery moving into the pro's, so colleges "tax" athletes by not paying them, and substitute the incentive of "you might be the next Lebron." (Do s/Lebron/Google/ and doesn't it sounds eerily similar to VC startup logic?!) Then the rest of the student body benefits because the football team just paid the salary of the Poetry professor. It might work this way, but I doubt it, although I'd love to see a study confirming how much money trickles back into colleges from their sports teams. We can just look at the larger macroscopic view for how efficient trickle down economics really is: of all the hundreds of billions given to the rich elites, how much of it trickles down to the poor? I bet the football team is keeping most of its profit, and in fact on average is a net loss to its attached college.