A person has to be either incredibly naive or stupid to think athletics are powerless in COA cals. I'm a CPA, numbers can be juggled to say whatever the hell you want. Especially when instructed to do so by crooked CEOs or organizations not concerned with following the rules.
But go ahead son, pretend these numbers are calculated by egghead professors while ADs and coaches sit by as helpless bystanders. Your life surrounded by unicorns and rainbows must be interesting.
It would make little sense to calculate COA too high as it would reduce the number of applicants to the school. In case most of you haven't noticed, at most SEC schools Athletics and the academic portion of the University are basically separate entities that coincide. It is possibly that schools could inflate numbers to benefit athletics while harming academics; I think what will happen is schools will be forced to show how much it truly costs to attend their university. In my opinion, UK has an incredibly low COA that probably does not accurately reflect the reality of going to school at UK.