You're mixing apples and oranges here.
Yes, Tech washes people - athletes and others - out for academic reasons all the time. But what some here are talking about is washing out a student based not on his performance in the classroom, but on his performance on the football field. That's different. Tech made a deal with the players: stay in school and play football and we'll pay for most of it. If they can't cut it academically, they usually leave. But if they can't get on the field, keep trying, and they stay in school, then the rest of the bargain still stands. Tech took a chance that the player will be a contributor to the main income-earning sport sponsored by the GTAA and the reason the young man came to Tech was to play and go to school. However, the bargain doesn't end if the player can't get on the field. Taking the scholarship away is, in effect, kicking the kid out of school for reasons that have little or nothing to do with his education. That won't do. I don't care what some schools - there are less of them then we might think, imho - do, that isn't how we've done things and it is both cynical and short-sighted to start with that kind of thing now.
Or, at least, that's how it seems to me.