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I think Brian Johnson was last Illini basketball player to get an engineering degree. FYI - he was a walk on and Lucas' younger brother. My understanding was they don't let football and basketball players major in engineering because the lab classes get in the way of afternoon practices.
There used to be morning chem/physics labs. They had to have them in order to get enough students through the lab. I'd be surprised if they found a way to get rid of them.
I suspect there are other factors.
1) For the courses I took, the homework load for a typical 3hr engineering course was 2-3 times that of a 3hr LAS course (chem/phys labs excepted). This was despite my being far better at engineering. It just took far less time to do the reading/writing than learning the more complex algorithms and then doing the problem sets. There may be LAS courses that require a lot of time. I never found one. [Some of the Music and Fine and Applied Arts courses on the other hand ...]
2) Eng professors may not be as willing to bend the assignment/exam schedules. I know one eng prof who told athletes that they would be allowed one late homework or makeup exam during the semester. All others would be graded as zeros. "Decide if you are primarily a student, or an athlete."