A competitive athletic program is a huge time sink: practices, weight room, travel, meets, game day. That time spent elsewhere can go a long ways to covering college costs, such as taking extra classes and finishing a semester or quarter earlier or going to a school with a good coop program. Even a low-paying on-campus job can be competitive if the per hour rates are fairly compared.
But even lower-level sports and any number of other activities can be significant time sinks as well. Perhaps less so than being on a top-ranked varsity team but not necessarily insignificant.
