In the last few years there have been calls -- not only by lawyers -- to reduce the number of law schools in America, because too many law school graduates can't find jobs as lawyers. Here's an example from 2009, by Professor Stephen Bainbridge of UCLA. Law schools that can't place a large portion of their graduates -- at least half to two-thirds -- at a law firm, with government, or in a judicial clerkship are scorned as being failures.
So: why is it that a law school that places only (say) 50% of its graduates in law jobs is a failure, but a football program that places only 5% of its graduates in football jobs is a success? Maybe it's because only 1.7% of NCAA college football seniors even get drafted by an NFL team, a remarkably dismal placement record that would get any non-athletic department laughed off campus.