When I was an undergrad (early '70s) certain course were KNOWN to be "easy", one was Geology 101, called "Rocks for Jocks". The professor was apparently a big football fan. I had a buddy who signed up for it expecting an easy A and found himself in a class taught by a different professor. He told me most of the class dropped in the first week, as did he.
I think today the "tutors" know a curriculum that meets NCAA guidelines, and the players take certain classes known to be easy so they can get along but don't really lead to a substantive degree, we see majors now called "Consumer Economics". In my day, Spanish was a common major for players.
Even the smarter players who would have gone to college without football mostly take it easy given their time demands for playing football. We almost never see majors like Engineering or science or math. And many of these kids were BMOC in High School and got used to teacher's passing them on with a "C" because they played football. That happened in my day also in HS. And some of them attended poor high schools of course, of which there are many.
What to do? I dunno, up to the university I guess, if they want to offer crip courses that mean nothing, I guess it will happen, always. It's bad when a pretty good school like UNC does it of course, but hardly unexpected to me.
