Not only are sports not important to the university. They’re not important to a lot of the students. In fact, they often look down at athletes for getting priority on acceptance.
My cousin is a reasonable, but not diehard sports fan. He went to Harvard. He was completely unaware when they won a national championship in hockey. And he lived in Boston at the time. His sister went to Yale. When Yale won a national championship she was unaware they had a hockey team.
Then there’s the third cousin who went to Penn. He also went to Michigan Law. A lot of people are unaware he attended an Ivy. But they know he went to Michigan due to his constant basketball and football talk.