Every argument about college athletics finance eventually runs into the same wall. Someone cites a revenue figure. Someone else cites a different revenue figure for the same school in the same year. Both are correctly sourced. Both are millions of dollars apart.
This isn't sloppiness. It's the predictable result of an industry that has two major public financial datasets, both of which were built for purposes other than the one everybody uses them for.
Here's what each one actually measures, what the numbers look like when you put them side by side, and why the gap between them is the most important thing in college sports finance that almost nobody talks about.