Does this profit calculation include or exclude the cost (or bond interest payments) of building up a football stadium with supporting facilities?

Obviously that's going to be an analysis that has to be done for every stadium. Certainly in many cases it works out -- the average age of an NCAA stadium or arena is much higher than a professional venue. These are not the billion-dollar megaplexes you're probably imagining.

But really, I think the issue here is that you're arguing at cross purposes. There's a strong argument to be made that the whole idea of the state running a profit-making sports team through its universities is flawed and borderline immoral. And I tend to agree.

But that says nothing about the economics of the situation, or the "fairness" of paying the coaching staff a market wage, or even the fact that these absurd salaries are, in fact, driven by a very liquid and efficient market.

Yeah, agree with what you're saying. The "fairness" comes into play as high-salaried coaches become high-pensioned retirees [1], but other than that NCAA salaries are not wildly divergent from professional sports salaries, so seem to be in line with market

http://budget.universityofcalifornia.edu/files/2011/11/2012-...