If a school decides to make exceptions for the football players, then the other student-athletes and even the regular students could demand the same opportunity. That could become an issue for the school once it goes back to requiring its students to attend class in the classroom. Plus, there are some classes (i.e. chemistry, physics, astronomy, labs, etc.) that may not be feasible to teach virtually and the professor achieve the class's objectives.

Now whether a school or even individual professors require classroom attendance or not may be up for debate. It will be interesting to see what policies the schools and the professors make going forward as everyone tries to define how the "new normal" will look. When I was a student at VT ('96-'00) I took a virtual class and I didn't like it. The lack of classroom interaction was definitely missing from the class because there was no message board requirements. Although I don't consider the interaction on a message board to on the same level that you get in a classroom. The only time I ever saw the professor or other students is when we showed up to a classroom to turn in homework assignments and to take a quiz or test. A class on Zoom or Teams may offer a little more interaction between people. However, that assumes that everyone has a stable internet connection for the entire class. If the connection is broken for whatever reason, then the person is basically SOL that day.