Absolutely not. There were a lot of non-athletes taking those classes. The department was run by a person not in the athletic department. I think the athletes enjoyed the easy classes, but the African-American studies department enjoyed the benefits of having more students take its classes, thereby allowing the department to grow, hire more professors, sending their professors to conferences, etc.
There was a large group of white fraternity boys, not athletes, who discovered the department and the easy A’s.