But as you note in your Post 16, the football program funds the rest of the athletic department. Absent football program dollars, the athletic department faces a $20m shortfall. With a shortfall, they can either make up the difference in state funds or eliminate other sports, neither of which seems like a particularly fair opinion to the taxpayers of the state, some of whom enrolled at PSU to play sports like tennis or lacrosse or whatever.
Plus, your $50m profit number seems pretty inflated. The article to which you linked noted that the p/l numbers didn't include debt service or capital expenditures, which was $35 million. Take that into account, the athletic department runs a deficit of a few million dollars. Minus the football money, that deficit would have to be made up by state funds.
Or just Penn State football.
It's always been about Penn State football.