Before I was a junior in college, I always just assumed college basketball programs made money. I mean, they'd have to, right? You pack a bunch of people into a gym 20 times a year -- including boosters willing to donate big bucks to sit in the front row -- and you almost have to rake in the cash, right? What's worse, you payroll, at least compared to professional franchises, is limited to your coach's outsized salary and $50,000 a year or so for every scholarship player on the team. You can't make money doing this?

But some schools don't. That is, they don't make as much money as big-time college football programs. A basketball program like Indiana might make $4 million in a season; Michigan football likely makes that every home game. These disparities tend to grow the higher you go up the list of big-money programs. Which is why it's not exactly surprising to hear that, yet again, most NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision schools didn't even make any money last year:

The NCAA's latest report on revenues and expenses, released Tuesday, showed fewer than 25 percent of all Football Bowl Subdivision schools made money in 2007-08, while the remaining 302 schools competing in Division I struggled to break even. Twenty-five of 119 FBS schools reported overall profits, an increase from 19 in 2006.

Why the disparities? It's easy: Big schools have boosters and sold-out games and tailgating and the rest of it. Small schools don't have that stuff. And schools that just compete in basketball, or don't have strong football programs, lose the cash cow that separates that profitable minority from the just-barely-breaking-even majority. (The recession also affected college budgets, too; donations and contributions were down, and schools had to fund more of their own athletics budget than in 2006.)

That said, within their respective sports, college hoops can be profitable. Another stat from the AP:

Of the 119 FBS football teams, 68 (57.1 percent) finished the year in the black. [...] Of the 119 FBS schools playing men's basketball, 67 teams made a profit.

Of course those football teams are making way, way, way more money than college hoops teams. It's like saying the corner coffee store is profitable, and so is Starbucks. But still: The corner store can make a profit! For those of us who care far less about football than hoops, it's good to know the latter can exist independent of the former.

Related: NCAA Rules and Regs