A fairly large portion of the Ivy league schools student bodies are varsity athletes. The schools are smaller and each sponsors 25-35 varsity teams. They aren’t bending much as all those athletes ARE the student body.
The football team at Texas is about 120 players. There are 18 varsity teams The student body is about 40k undergrads. If they bend the admission standards for 50 football players, who cares? Even if there are 1000 athletes admitted with under 36 ACTs, that still leaves 39000 students to bond with as intellectual peers.