Is the academic admissions criteria really that different at Wisconsin for athletes than it is at other places? The Atlanta Journal Constitution had a good investigative piece a few years back where they made public records requests at major public universities and got SAT data for college football teams at just about all public flagships, and what they found isn't surprising but is interesting. Wisconsin had an average SAT of 961, which was about 250 points below the rest of the student body. Generally speaking, selective institutions showed greater gaps between football players SAT and student body SAT (GaTech: 1028, 316 gap; UNC: 951, 317 gap , Berkley: 967, 331 gap, UCLA: 935, 340 gap, Texas: 948, 282 gap ) than less selective institutions. (Looks like most of the data from the article is summarized here https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/12/29/admit)