In the real world, there would be reports about all the athletes on each team, status, amount of scholarship and results by each athlete. Those reports would be used to verify that scholarships were going to real athletes and show how well each coach was making decisions about where the money went.
Of course, universities seem to just throw money around like it is not their’s and there is always more where that came from, oh wait...
Those reports exist and if these girls were on the formal roster or on a practice squad they would be included in the report. The information includes practice hours, course attendance, grades, as well as game stats and injuries. A lot is reported to the NCAA and the regional conference (SEC, ACC, etc). If the girls completed a formal tryout and didn’t make either team, that would be noted somewhere too. The breakdown is between the admission tag and the formal tryout. They got admitted based on the tag and then never tried out for the team.
A friend of mine’s son was being tagged at a couple of schools for basketball. He was a decent player, but not good enough for any D-1 school to offer a scholarship. He had a good enough ACT for about 90% of the schools in the US, borderline for about 5% and below for about the top 5% of schools. At some point he chose a school where he was admitted for his academics (which weren’t bad) and didn’t need the special tag. He made the team as a walk-on and had the time of his life. He was only over his head when he blew off his homework. I haven’t talked to either of them this week, but now they can add guilt free.
A sport like crew is probably a “low-worry” sport. The actual athletes are probably academically driven enough that they achieve decent gpa’s, have few behavior issues, and time to be in at least one other activity on campus. Combined with being low revenue, they often fly well below the radar in large athletic programs.