into our top rated program even if they are far below qualifying that will make our football team competitive? Obviously that is no guarantee.

Knowing how universities work I would be very surprised if the wealth from alumni through the business school does not account for at least as much money as the football program brings the school. Law school might be similar. I have no specific evidence of this but I'm confident its true. I assume you would be surprised that most alumni from competitive MBAs and Law Schools care very much for the prestige of their grad schools since that is almost always one of the main reasons they chose that school. Since the credibility of the masters programs are almost entirely viewed by rankings you have to play this game.

I think we have a fundamental misunderstanding here. I wholeheartedly agree that we need to make the path much easier for undergrad recruits. The under grad ranking system gets almost untouched at a 25,000 undergrad student school by under-qualified students. A couple kids that you stretch way way out for is going to have almost no impact on the overall #s or quality.

Master's programs are an entirely different animals. The rankings matter way more. The number of students is 100-250 in an admission class and even the low numbers of 1 or 2 students is extremely impacting where the competition nationwide is so fierce. My guess is for a student athlete they try and drop the #s of bit if they can but there is no way they are dropping the required numbers 20% lower than the average for a football player who may not even impact the university. It would undermine everything they are trying to accomplish