We're not talking about where you or me should go to school, we're talking about where a 5-star athlete should go.
To take the analogy a bit farther, I wouldn't have advised Lebron James to play four years at Stanford instead of skipping school altogether. Same goes for 1st round MLB draft picks, etc.
A 5-star athlete's best chance at making big-time money is in the sports world. Trying to leverage his athletic ability into a venture capitalist gig or exec at a tech company seems like a stretch, tbh.
You're explaining to me the best strategies to win at checkers when we're talking about how to win at chess.