Yes, I got my degree in 5 years and was on the team for all 5 of those years. It was tough. Lots of scheduling conflicts, because practice/meeting/lifting times are set in stone and you have to schedule your academics around them. I didn't find the workload too bad, but I basically didn't have time to do anything else other than football and school. In-season you scale back classes to the minimum number of credit-hours because football takes about 50 hours per week (minimum, 60 hours when you are travelling that week). I took 5 years though, so was able to spread the credit-hours out over an extra year so I wasn't taking too many classes each term.
There was a starter on the football team in my graduating class at umich cs. The only explanation of how he found the time I can think of is he had tutors do most of the work for him.
I think its unfair to assume that about him. There were a decent number of athletes in engineering degrees when I was in school and they absolutely worked their asses off, myself included.
Although there were special athletic academic tutors, there weren't any available that could tutor for engineering subjects so I doubt any athletes were getting assignments done for them. Regular tutors wouldn't have played along with that game. Also, the professors (at least most of mine) were pretty skeptical of athletics, so I was on a short leash for what I could get away with (missing classes, moving exam dates, asking for extra time on projects, etc). If they sniffed that I was cheating, they would have brought the hammer down without thinking twice. That's just my experience at my school though.
Just a second hand anecdote, but a professor of mine
at my small liberal arts college with a D3 football team - mentioned over a few glasses of wine that he had moved on from teaching at Virginia Tech because he was pressured by the administration to give passing grades to Michael Vick, who never attended a single class or completed any coursework of his.
Yeah, I would only be mildly surprised if this happened a time or two while I was in school. There are some guys that just don't want to go to school, but college football is their only pathway to make it to the NFL. The academic counselors have their hands full just trying to keep all their athletes eligible, let alone enabling them to thrive in an academic environment.