Who's looking out for the thousands of other non-athlete students?
Pretty much the entire rest of the administration or faculty at any major university--even in law schools these days, if you ask or need it. I sat at orientation, first day of my law school, and the Dean said, "There's an old law school introduction that goes, look to your right, then your left, one of you won't be here for second year. But In all my time as Dean, I've never seen that happen if the student just came to me or another member of my team and asked for help." That was completely true: I had a friend who barely showed up, didn't turn in even final papers, but they kept giving him chance after chance after chance.
It's been a long time since I was in undergrad, but even in the 80's there was no dearth of potential help from throughout the faculty and admin, organizations, mentors, clubs, other students, etc. and etc. Even in my era, I was going to be three credits short of graduating, because I didn't like my econ class (it was at 8 am) and stupidly dropped it super late in the cycle. My philosophy advisor helped me out by creating an independent study for me, which he monitored over the following summer to get me the credits.
I know I never would have made it as a scholarship athlete with all the things on those students' daily schedule without some real guidance and help: all the extra pressure, all the film study, weight room, practice times, travel to games, distractions and distractions, etc. I could barely make it to language lab twice a week without those obligations. I managed to miss the one-time trip to the planetarium and had to retake astronomy, and it was probably the only thing I had to do that day. I couldn't have done the student-athlete thing. That's a very specific world.
But who was looking out for students like me? Everyone I ever asked.