You have a responsibility as a student-athlete to stay eligible, do you not? You cannot play if you are academically ineligible, which is why you are partly at the school in the first place. Why would it not be considered a strike? I also think it would be pretty strange to see Hawkins pushing off-field accomplishments and emphasizing how his guys "do it the right way" only to view Simas missing an entire season due to grades as a minor indiscretion.
I would also add that Simas freely admitted he had issues with grades because he was lazy. That is entirely different than just struggling with school.
With all the help student athletes have available to them, any grade issues with players can be traced to laziness, I think. There are plenty of majors available to students that don't require supreme intelligence to get passing grades in even upper division courses. Sure, Simas' grade issues could be attributed to laziness, but I think what the interviews with him about his grades showed was the realization that he wasn't going to be awarded passing grades at CU just because he was a good football player. That **** may fly at some high schools and I think that it is abundantly clear that it flies at many universities, but it is pretty obvious to me that it doesn't work that way at CU. And I'm good with with that.