I’m not really understanding this question. If he doesn’t continue in his sport, he has a ton of options of big/small, urban/rural, greek, location etc. Being a recruited athlete or not and whether he can actually find a school that fits is much, much more difficult. The process will also probably help tremendously on whether he truly has no preference.
I mean otherwise you have a sophomore with good stats and no preference. It doesn’t really make much sense to spend a whole lot of energy on getting too hung up on anything until you have a better sense of grades and test scores to understand merit possibilities. Not to mention a lot of schools that give merit can change quickly on their offerings. Tulane is a good example where merit was pretty generous, but they’ve made an aggressive move to need based. I can tell you that my daughter’s net at Case was $35K after merit but the data is already old and will be ancient before it’s relevant. Another anecdote, Rochester was initially on our radar as they had a huge merit scholarship tied to FIRST robotics. by the time my son applied it has been trimmed to $8K a year.
He likes the flagship and it’s affordable. Figure out if recruiting is at play and if not you can evaluate merit schools with real stats and updated info in 18 - 24 months.