Grit, leadership, team work, the crucible of (a different type of) competition, tactics and strategy, etc. Again, not sports in general, but specifically being good enough at a sport to get a D1 or D2 scholarship, requires significant discipline and inter-personal skills.

(I also think tech folks under-appreciate that physical movement is a type of intelligence that might just correlate well with certain types of high-stress/low-information decision making... at least as well as IQ correlates with similar types of things... but that's an evidence-free conjecture on my part.)

> there's probably a reasonable argument that the four-factor (academic, extracurricular, athletic, personal) model creates more systematic biases than it avoids. But what you're saying is pretty accurate.

That's definitely true -- eg a student from outside the college-going class or without enough economic capital wouldn't be able to participate in niche sports and become elite by virtue of big fish/small point dynamics. And their parent wouldn't have friends who could give advice or open doors. But, do note that the student in the referenced paragraph is not a victim of that type of systematic bias. His father, a partner at IBM, is exactly the type of person who is positioned to provide those unfair advantages.