Do students attend MIT because of the football team? The Engineers play in NCAA division 3. Their stadium seats all of 1000. Many high school stadiums are bigger than that.
Do students attend Cal Tech because of the football team? Cal Tech shuttered it’s football program 30 years ago.
GM CEO Mary Barra graduated from GMI (from the days when General Motors was so vertically integrated it developed it’s own cadre of engineers), now known as Kettering University. Kettering had no varsity athletic program.
People compete for spots in those institutions because of their record of academic excellence. Where do you want the “leaders and statesmen” to be developed? In an institution with a reputation for excellence, or a reputation for corralling a herd of overgrown morons to crash into each-other?
Teaching kids to hate the kids at another school, because their parents happened to settle in a different neighborhood? This is not only wasteful, it’s stupid.
Yeah, this is a really good look for what are supposed to be institutions of learning.
/sarcasm