I just don’t think you have the visibility to be able to make such a broad statement. And the data say otherwise.
D1 baseball players report spending 42 hours per week on average on athletic related activities during the season, FBS football players 40 hours in the most recent NCAA goals study…are you saying that’s inaccurate? Of course the students should be including travel times in these estimates because the travel makes things even more grueling whether or not some can get some studying done during that time. It likely won’t be ideal study conditions or sleep conditions if that’s what they choose to do.
And it’s not just travel for games/matches/meets. Some teams have a 30 minute drive to their practice location everyday…so 60 minutes just gone out of their day to commute to/from practice. Just dead time really, unless one wants to count that as team bonding time.