In a sense, division 1 football and conservatory do have some things in common. Students going to a conservatory generally are focused on a career in music and go to the conservatory to further that goal, and many of them pay for the privilege of going there, either partially or fully (the number of free ride scholarships to those schools being pretty rare). With division 1 football, many of the players there dream of making the pros and in a sense the college football program for them is a place to build their skills to hope they get into the pros. In a sense, they do major in football, quite frankly even when players get degrees, they often are of dubious quality, especially at some of the big football schools.
Of course, the analogy holds true if you look at the percent of players who actually make it in the NFL, even for short careers, the percent from those playing high school football to the pros is about .05%, and even going to a top school like Alabama, the percent of kids graduating each you who end up with even short pro careers is pretty small…
Where there is a difference is more than a few kids use the football scholarship to get an education they otherwise couldn’t afford, a number of kids playing college football at the top level, where they have full ride, don’t intend on playing professionally, which is something conservatory doesn’t really have.
Where the analogy is correct is in football programs that don’t have scholarships or offer only small ones (division 1 small schools, division 1a,2 and 3) but will admit athletes for example with credentials that otherwise wouldn’t get them into the school (the Ivy league, for example, or the elite LAC’s that have sports programs), and that is similar to being a music kid and applying, it definitely gives an edge (how much depends on the school; in some programs, music is a nice EC, in others, like the Ivies, it can really help; I suspect sports in many programs weighs heavier than music, but both have influence.