True, the NCAA has a terrible rep for good reason. On the academic tricks schools play, UNC is a good case that was made pretty public.
Here is the basic scenario, athletes are allowed (reasonably b/c of practice scheduling) to register first among students. They are told which, or at least a certain few, classes they should register for. Lo and behold that class fills up with only athletes as it is a 15 max capacity class, or some such. Then the class itself is taught as a total joke. The NCAA sees it as just an internal school issue, wholly academic because the classes were technically "open" to all students (doesn't matter if they miraculously end up filled with athletes). See the trick?
This is s.o.p. at the factories and many of the other big state schools, I am highly confident of that. Only about 7-8 years after the Jan Kemp scandal rocked UGA that school was following this exact approach I just described and I am sure always has and will continue to do so. I know someone who had a disability (eyesight) and so while at UGA was given the same priority to register first as athletes had. He happened to end up registering for one of these courses for athletes and I won't go into detail here but the class was a complete joke and the athletes could earn high marks while doing literally no work. (This is wholly separate from the Harrick scandal).
Now . . . I do think that head coaches at Tech can be held responsible for how they handle recruiting HERE, and can be judged as improving, declining, good/bad. I just think such an evaluation is more imprecise and impressionistic here than it is at a school that operates like a Bama. There you can just look at overall rankings and know if the coach is doing well.
