They are not mutually exclusive. You can get an excellent education and still participate in sports, and you can continue in sports after college without going pro. Rich Eisen has a talk radio/tv show. He played football at Michigan and then got a masters at Northwestern in some kind of journalism or communications. He is one smart guy, and doesn’t play football professionally (never did). I know dozens of former college athletes who are coaches, refs, own sports related businesses. I know many more who have other careers but still participate in weekend leagues, swim masters swimming, take up other sports like running. Sports doesn’t end when you leave college, just like music doesn’t end if you don’t go on to be a professional musician, or theater doesn’t end if you don’t move to NYC and do broadway.
I know many people who received excellent educations, sometimes at schools they couldn’t have been admitted to without sports or afforded without the athletic scholarship. For my daughter, sports opened may opportunities at colleges she wouldn’t have been accepted to because she didn’t have a 30 ACT or a college savings account. Sports have been the entry into a debt free education.