alt Hacker NewsElite football and basketball athletes at major programs are tiny, tiny minority of all student athletes in this country. I went to a decent regional state school (DII at the time) and I had advanced economics and math classes with a number of athletes, including football players. It's just not correct to generalize from the programs that are NFL feeder programs.
Fair, but NFL feeder programs are not educating their athletes, including a number of athletes who will not make the NFL or NBA. They are getting little to no education and have no shot at turning pro.
Worse yet, the chase for more and more football money has screwed over regional conferences, which harms the run-of-the-mill student athlete in non-revenue sports (think track, swimming, tennis, etc) who has no pro aspirations. Why the hell is Stamford, a school on the west coast, in the Atlantic Coast Conference?