That's a nice fantasy you are having, but for the elite athletes in the money sports, the scholarship has nothing whatever to do with an academic degree.

That presents a big problem because athletes are also living a fantasy where they all imagine going pro. Less than 1% of college football players go pro! Same order of magnitude for college basketball players.

You might be conflating college athletes with high school and middle school athletes.

By the time you reaches college, you typically:

1. have enough data to see how quickly you're improving;

2. are exposed to a much wider pool of talent than you were previously. Chances are there are many people at your level of athletics that are far better than you; and

3. are exposed to a much more difficult environment than high school and middle school. Combined with 1 and 2, many athletes lose the desire to work that hard for so long.

For athletes that aren't in the upper tier of college athletics, reality has set in even earlier.

Believe it or not, the vast majority of student athletes are not elite athletes that will go on to play professionally. There are only sixty players drafted to the NBA each year, even at powerhouse schools like Duke, most players on the team know that they're not going to play professionally.

Those money sports are wallowing in billions of dollars. They can afford their own farm leagues for anyone not good enough out of high school.

Academic degrees. Athletes in their 5th or 6th year (redshirt and whiteshirt) can continue their education in graduate school, and many do.