As above, for the Div 1 colleges (Washington State etc) the football program is a massive income stream.
That’s why the coach is the uni’s highest paid employee.

Most of the football students are barely literate but the college will tutor them 1:1 to keep them on track academically.

Where the sports programs do work is further down the college levels – during my post-doc at Ohio State in the 90s approximately half the grad students had won a sports scholarship (cross-country running x2, swimming, baseball etc), This meant they graduated without debt and could afford to do a masters, PhD etc.

I was actually based in Wooster, Ohio. The College of Wooster (A private college based in the same town, and Div 3 for football) even offered bagpipe scholarships!