I'm resurrecting a five year old thread here, but its better to recycle than to waste, and the old discussion provides background to the article:

Washington Post, 23 Feb 14: West Point is Placing Too Much Emphasis on Football
Internal studies conducted in the past decade show that, once at West Point, recruited football players are more than twice as likely to fail courses, more likely to leave the Army early and less likely to be promoted to higher ranks in the Army compared with their non-recruited counterparts. There are exceptions, of course…...Yet the aggregate numbers demonstrate that loosening academic standards runs counter to the academy’s mission to prepare each graduate “for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army.”