1/3 of them were admitted as student athletes. Everyone knows that it is official policy at most schools to accept people with athletic ability who would not qualify academically. Why? Because those athletic programs make the university a lot of money!
How is admitting someone because their family gave a lot of money any different in principle? It is just a question of reducing how many steps there are to making a profit for the school.
In any case, it might be negatively impacting the school's athletic program because real athletes have spots taken by opportunists.
My point remains. Once you've opened the door to accepting students for non-academic reasons, you've opened it to accepting them for other non-academic reasons.
(In this case I don't care about the impact on "real athletes" because I don't think that athletic programs are important to the university's core mission.)
Also these students admitted as "athletics" did not actually qualify and were never part of the team.
Therefore the fact that individual sports and athletes do not make money doesn't mean that money isn't a reason for student athletic programs.
It reminds me of the Lori Loughlin case, where she was arrested not because bribing a university to admit your child is unfair to other applicants and sullies the ideal of an academic meritocracy, but because she didn't follow the university's established process for bribery. (Matt Levine expounds on this with his usual hilarity at https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-13/you-ha...)