Football is often profitable at higher and lower levels, it's the middle level that often loses money.
Like look at Wagner.
They offer up to 45 scholarships (for the sake of the argument lets say they offer all 45).
Their roster has 132 players on it (
https://wagnerathletics.com/sports/football/roster). Even if they offer some other aid on top of the 45 scholarships, they're still getting a lot of kids paying a lot of tuition.
Wagner has 1,750 undergrads, and 39% of their student body is male. That means there are ~683 undergrad men at Wagner. They have 4 grad students on the football roster, but that leaves 128 undergrad men who play football. So just under 20% of the men are football players.
Also, they play 2 FBS games every year (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Wagne...tball_team) dating back to 2019, sans the covid year. Combined those games probably make around $600-800k. I couldn't find a good source on Wagner's budget, but the only public school in the NEC, Central Connecticut, reported $2.4 million in football expenses. Wagner does generate some revenue in ticket sales, media deals, sponsorships, and donations, probably not $1.6 million's worth, but a non zero amount.
So on the whole, Wagner football probably loses around $1 million a year, but without it the school would lose 20% of its male enrollment, and about 80 of those football players pay tuition, which would more than close that gap.
You could also argue there's some positive externalities to football - gives students something to do on weekends, brings alumni back on campus, increases school spirit, and athletes tend to donate back to schools at a higher rate than non-athletes - but those are generally more subjective, and some of them are less applicable at an NEC school that averages 1,500 in attendance.
