But not because the church's accounting is simpler. BYU sports pay for themselves (unlike most university sports programs that get initial tax support and then seem to need more, like the topic thread indicates).

Your team, the red team, true to form, operates in the red without taxpayers subsudizing that garbage. There's not enough market support. There's not enough market support because people don't care about supporting the Runnin' (in the) Reds as much as they care about hating BYU.

How about let's take away, say, the $5M in direct university support the Runnin Reds get and see if they can draw enough actual fan support to operate like any other market-based entertainment company.