Last Chance U is great and a great insight, I really enjoy the show, and get heart broken for these kids. You can't really get schaudenfraude when they fail like other shows or dramas.
But there's a few things you may not have caught, which seems to be the same across most college sports and just exacerbates as you become more competitive/make more cash like a D1 school.
When I was in season I spent 5-8 hours a day on the sport. 3 hours for practice, 1-2 hours reading scouting reports, in rehab, working out, or watching film. On game day it was a good 8 hours if we weren't traveling, a full day if we were (longest bus ride was 7.5 h each way). We calculated that we spent around 3600 hours in sports over 4 years. That's over a part time job and nearing full time job while working.
This makes it real hard to get to normal tutoring sessions which are in the afternoon many places. Or to labs, or office hours, etc. At my school the athletic department (ad) just got the big classes to setup tutoring sessions in the athletic complex (ac). They were open to anyone actually. But we had better discipline (a coach would sit in on many sessions and deal with any disruptions) and better hours so we got some of the best tutors to show up. My physics 101 tutor had to move to the gym he was so popular.
Now move to Last Chance U... kids who have been failed in many ways by high schools who didn't teach them, parents, themselves, or just not being quite good enough to "make it" but not ready to realize that. They need a ton of help. This is very much the last chance for these kids at ball or making it through that avenue. Making it via sports is what 80% of these kids think is literally their only option. Tho there's the lineman in the first season was like "it'll get me a degree and out of the factory."
But if you pay attention, most of those sessions the players are at, they're for all of the students, who also have guidance counselors. The difference is just that the Athletic Department pays for a guidance counselor, and the coach is a surrogate parent for these kids (who happens to work there), and the GC and the coaches, they talk and these kids have to stay eligible to play or to go to the school. Normal students can ignore the GC, and fail out, and they're not on TV. The players can't.
If you haven't played school sports or don't have kids who play sports, a coach can often wield more influence over a kid than parents can. My friend just immigrated, his kid was playing sports, and my friend was lamenting his kid was slacking off. I suggested he email the coach. That evening the kid apologized to his dad and set up a study schedule he showed his dad and his grades went up a letter over the next month. Basically the coach brought the kid to his office during study hour and said "you're going to run a lot and your play time is going to go down if you don't get your grades back up." that's all it took. As a regular parent generally if you said "go run till you puke or realize you should get your grades up" you'd get laughed at.
I heard a (possibly apocryphal) story. One of Tony Dungy's kids was playing high school football, and was just grabbing a slice of toast for breakfast. Tony tells him "you need a bigger meal with protein before practice."
A week later he sees his son getting up early to make a big breakfast, and comments on it. His son says "yeah, coach told me I need to eat more"
I turned down Harvard many years ago for not offering athletics scholarships-- I could not reasonably afford school any other way. And, I was laughed at for years by those in the know of the "need based" assistance framework. One thing that made it unaffordable in my case was they wanted a year of prep school on top of high school which definitely is exclusionary. But, if a Bloomberg contributor can fail to see a pathway equivalent to a scholarship for someone who financially cannot attend any other way, I'd say there is something to the author's grievance.
Interesting, what was the prep school? My school required 4 years of math/science in HS which is a thing many US schools don't require but if you're a top student you can go for. One kid I played with only had 2 years of HS. He spent the whole summer on campus from like 3 days after HS graduation to 3 days into football taking stats, physics, chemistry, and college algebra to get him up to snuff. I think that may be similar to the prep you're talking about. He ended up doing fine (average grades) in the B school, and I believe is a arson investigator now.
I knew intellectually that college athletes were coddled academically and while it's hard not to root for the individuals depicted in the documentary to succeed it's also hard not to think that there must be dozens of kids at the schools where they come from that were more academically inclined and could have made better use of the resources provided to the student athletes.