I went to a large school in one of the big NCAA athletic conferences. Their stadium cost around $100M in 2020 dollars, and they bring in roughly $100M in revenue from all sports annually. They call football and basketball "revenue sports" because they fund all the others. I'm not sure how much tuition goes to sports, but the big ones are very self-sufficient. That, and they serve as marketing for the school, and that can add value to the degree.
Sport, at least in principle, if you squint, has more to do with education. After all, grade schools have a physical education subject but no gambling subject. (Elite, pro, spectator sport is different though, that's why the squinting is required).
Generally, Americans have an obsession with what they call "well-roundedness" and a "holistic" approach which I don't see elsewhere that much. For example in European university admissions nobody cares about subjective stuff like volunteering experience, musical talent etc, when doing university admissions. It's all focused on the narrow academic subject. You also don't take generic subjects unrelated to your study program as in American undergrad.
The whole culture and concept of what a university is supposed to be, is pretty different in the US overall
I went to a large school in one of the big NCAA athletic conferences. Their stadium cost around $100M in 2020 dollars, and they bring in roughly $100M in revenue from all sports annually. They call football and basketball "revenue sports" because they fund all the others. I'm not sure how much tuition goes to sports, but the big ones are very self-sufficient. That, and they serve as marketing for the school, and that can add value to the degree.