Credit for Athletics

At Universities, students are required to have a certain amount of PE credits depending on their major. We have to take classes like "weightlifting" or "swimming" in order to fulfill our degree requirements. Personally, I thoroughly enjoy these classes. I took softball last semester and had an absolute blast with it. We just went out to the softball fields every Tuesday and Thursday and just played softball, it was the best time of my week. I have heard from other student though that their PE class was not as fun. Some PE professors grade strictly on performance and improvement, and some professors assign papers on the sport and mandatory attendance at outside of class events. That would be the short side of the stick as those classes might be harder to keep up with than my simple, awesome softball class. But either way, we are getting academic credit for playing a sport or participating in a physical activity a couple of times per week. So, would it not be fair for athletes to get academic credit for playing a sport. If we only have class twice a week for less than an hour and half and they have practice everyday for multiple hours, shouldn't they get some kind of class credit for that? It sure seems so.
In these PE classes, not only are we running around and getting our exercise on, but we are also learning to deal with things like teamwork and sportsmanship. These are actually very important lessons in life, especially in the workplace. These PE classes can turn out to be very valuable. So, if we are learning the basics of teamwork and sportsmanship by going to a PE class three hours a week, how much of those two attributes do you think athletes learn by practically having to make siblings out of their teammates throughout the year? Surely they can probably teach the rest of us a thing or two about having to get along and get along well. So these athletes are spending five times as many hours in practice as a PE class does and they experience much more of the lessons learned in these classes but they don't get ANY academic credit for it? Something is wrong with that picture.