In recent years, when a university may earn well over $10 million per year from fees for sports-broadcast rights, half of the teams still lose. Collegiate athletic competition is a zero sum game: The number of winners equals the number of losers. So why do universities spend growing sums of scarce resources on an activity when the odds of winning remain no better than even? The mystery is to locate the positive returns to college athletics that cause universities to double down when they see a red bottom line: While experiencing substantial financial losses, they aggressively spend more on salaries for coaches, facilities for players, and sizzle for fans. When the outcome on the playing fields is a zero-sum game and the financial accounts of athletic departments show a substantial loss, people are left to look for positive returns under the walnut shells of indirect effects, including public support, philanthropy, and student enrollment. In this article, the authors discuss the mystery of the zero-sum game. They argue that the popularity of collegiate athletics at so many of the nation's colleges and universities continues to mystify. (Contains 18 resources.)