What I see as really ironic here

Is that ND was the one of the first, if not the first, schools to develop the medical scholarship. The idea was to honor the scholarship commitment to a player who, through no fault of his own, had suffered a career-ending injury, while at the same time not unilaterally disarming ourselves by giving a football scholarship to a player who would never see the field. At the time, most other schools simply yanked the scholarships of players in similar circumstances.

And for that reason, I think the medical scholarships need to continue. Their application, however, should be limited to players who have suffered career-ending injuries, or reasonable facsimiles thereof.