It's not as ridiculous as you think.
I listened in to the recruiting talk at the Stanford Camp. Each year Stanford recruits extra kids. Last year they had 44 kids for 35 spots. The extra recruits are told upfront that if they impress, or there are injuries or someone quits they can earn a spot. If not, they just got into a great school that they probably would have been denied at otherwise.
They said that some of the UC's do this as well. They are covered by having a few extra players to fall back on, and the players that obviously are borderline D1 players anyway get into a better academic school. Sounds like a win-win to me.
As TPM said, they are up front about, so what is wrong with that.