Except it's sort of a poor correlation. Without making a study of it the best US collegiate football programs at least tend to be large state universities--which, don't get me wrong, are often good schools if you want them to be for you--but tend not to be the schools that come up in discussions of large endowments and the like. Basketball is more of a mixed bag in that it can rely on one or two star players and hockey, as I wrote elsewhere, is very regional and relatively small schools in the North have very good teams from time to time.

The GP says it's baffling to combine sports teams with academic institutions, and you're saying it's not because those that do tend to have smaller endowments? Talk about a non sequitur

I do think that sports are part of the college/university experience which you are of course free to disagree with. There are, of course, smaller schools that have relatively minimal athletic programs. Without making a scientific study of it, I also don't think the biggest endowments really correlate to the biggest and most successful sports programs, especially in football.

As the person you originally responded to, I have to agree with the one who you're responding to now; I don't really understand at all what endowments have to do with any of this. My argument is that the goal of education isn't helped by being intrinsically tied to a large amateur sports league. If you're trying to argue that public schools require sports teams in order to succeed financially due to them not having endowments, I think you skipped a few logical steps that I'd disagree with before you got to the question of endowments, e.g. the premise that being profitable is a primary goal of public universities.

As for sports being part of the college experience, I don't disagree with you that they are right now, but I don't see why that would have to be the case, since it certainly didn't use to be the case historically and still isn't the case in many parts of the world. From my perspective, they're so far removed from the actual purpose of universities that they've essentially marginalized the actual point of them for many schools, and the idea that they're integral to the experience is a sign of how much they've failed at their actual goal.

>As for sports being part of the college experience, I don't disagree with you that they are right now, but I don't see why that would have to be the case, since it certainly didn't use to be the case historically and still isn't the case in many parts of the world.

I think it tends to be in the Anglosphere at least. I won't really argue for the big college football etc. programs which has been an ongoing debate in the US for decades for Top 10 schools and related. James Michener wrote a book in the 70s or so. But athletic activities in various more or less organized forms are pretty established at many US schools and eliminating them would bring a pretty wide revolt (and not just talking about football).

At Caltech when I attended, the football team was known to proudly lose every game.

You're not thinking things through. Splitting off sports from academics would wreck alumni fundraising for a lot of schools. For better or worse, when the team wins the alumni open their wallets. And the less lucrative sports would essentially disappear (especially for women).

I'm not sure how much sense this argument makes. Most of the big sports schools are public, and I'd argue the budgets for academics at public schools should come from the states they're in, not from donations. I don't think it's obvious that private universities are raising that much money from their sports programs, but I'm open to being convinced if you have sources indicating this isn't the case.

As an aside, I don't think telling people that they haven't thought of things sufficiently is a particularly effective way of convincing them. There are a lot of potential other reasons someone might not agree with your point of view, and it's a bit hypocritical to tell someone else they're "not thinking things through" when you haven't actually figured out the reasoning behind their opinions.

You're not thinking things through, or doing even the bare minimum research. Financial data on sports revenue for most colleges is out there for anyone who cares to look. It's not my job to convince you of anything, I'm simply telling you how it works.