This life lessons thing is so amorphous and dumb. It's what everyone who tries to justify playing a violent sport where you smash your head into someone else's head likes to talk about. Plus everyone dreams of their kid being the ONE who makes plays and gets the glory when most kids end up being practice cannon fodder and standing on the sidelines during games.
Oh, also, the scholarships. They like to talk about that.
Put it this way -- let's talk about playing highly competitive sports at all--If every kid/parent combo who spent countless thousands of hours doing a sport--ANY sport, much less one proven to cause brain damage -- spent the same amount of time on furthering their academics, they would surely win academic scholarship money much easier than sports scholarship money. Last time Steel looked, there was 400 times as much academic scholarship money as there was athletic scholarship money available.
And if you are talking about a sport other than football, good luck getting a "full boat" scholarship. Chances are you'll get the same or even less than the average academic scholarship at a given school -- that is, you'll be playing MORE than the average smart kid there. It's a marketing thing for many schools -- hey let's have a boys' soccer team, then we can bring in 30 kids who will be paying a premium to be here and do their sport.
Higher education is a money-making endeavor. It's a racket. The people who work for these corporations are there to make money, to increase assets and line their own pockets. Sports is but an extension of that. The schools wouldn't continue doing sports if they weren't something that ultimately pads the bottom line.