The Pac12 is commonly called the Conference of Champions and its not just football and basketball championships that title refers to. It’s referring to all the championships they have in all of the Olympic sports programs which far and away outweigh the number of championships they have just in football or basketball (several times over). Obviously it does matter.

No they don’t produce revenue but they do add to the prestige of the university and many of the most wealthy and powerful current/former CEO/billionaires in America played Olympic Sports in college including Phil Knight (T&F), Ted Turner (Sailing), Alex Spain’s (Swimming & Diving), Donald Bren (Skiing), etc who have donated millions to their Alma maters over the years as a result.

You have to remember, not all money comes into a University’s Athletic Dept through TV revenue or ticket sales. BYU’s #1 source of Athletic Revenue is private donations and an example of that impacting the athletic dept completely independent of Football/Basketball is the $1 million plus the baseball team received to upgrade the field at Miller Park (also funded by Larry Miller family) with a state of the art heated playing surface to allow them to start playing home games earlier in the season.

I think sometimes the amount of revenue that the football and basketball programs ACTUALLY generates gets unrealistically hyped by BYU fans.