A school's athletic status (DI/II/III) ≠ academic prestige. WUSTL and UChicago are both D-III schools with athletic programs that are jokes. They essentially have high school teams.

WUSTL and UChicago are also academically elite - much, much better schools than BYU could ever hope to be. And just as it could make sense for a backup BYU LB to drop football and focus on academics at BYU, it could make a lot of sense for some of the kids on the UChicago and WUSTL football teams to drop sports and focus on academics. For many college athletes (especially the backups) a strong argument could be made that they would be better off, in the long run, if they gave up sports and focused on grades.

I didn't drop football because the only schools that were interested in me were academically inferior to BYU. I gave up football because I realized that my comparative advantage was in the classroom. So I focused on grades. For me, that was a really good choice. I think it would have been a good choice, regardless of whether I was at Snow College, BYU, or WUSTL.

Do you get it now? I'm not trying to convince you, but I do want to be sure you understand my point.