The question is how much they still want to play football

and if they want to remain at ND, are their academics strong enough since I'm guessing the athlete tutoring and other things won't be available to them since I'm guessing they'll just be a regular student on a football-equivalent scholarship.

I don't have a problem with this probably because I watched it happen to my sister in the swimming world. She was a top HS recruit and went to the Univ. of Texas which was a top 5 school. She was a sprinter and Texas brought in some foreign olympians who had better times at her events. She had three choices:

1) Learn a new event and try to stay on the team
2) Stay at Texas on an equivalent academic scholarship and just be a student.
3) Transfer

She ended up taking door #3 and actually transferred to ND where she did great and ended up being the captain her senior year. I liked it because I was in school then too and my parents actually showed up more often so I got more $20 handshakes from my dad so I always had beer money...priorities, right :)

Life is about choices and while it seems like these players are getting screwed, they're really not for the most part. They're stuck at the bottom of the roster and they're being given two options...stay at ND or go play football somewhere else. Chances are, they're not going to play in the pros so if they're a good student, they'll probably stay at ND and if not, they'll go keep the dream alive at a school where they can get on the field. Both are good options and might be better than grinding it out on the scout team which takes away from your academics.