Do you think its fair that athletes get to go into top colleges with terrible grades

Is it fair that the very selective top colleges accept athletes with the bare minimum GPA and could have took the easiest classes and done no other extracurriculars other than their sport? Won't this bring down the school's average GPA by a lot? An athlete who could have done nothing in high school and basically slacked can get accepted to a top tier selective colleges while someone with much better grades and ECs and SAT score who worked their butt off can get rejected. The athlete also gets a free ride. A college like Stanford could let in an athlete with a 2.0 GPA by taking the easiest classes with no EC's and low SAT score while reject a 4.0 valedictorian? That doesn't sound right.