It's not the debunked claims. As someone that did compete in sports in high school (albeit poorly), the story does check out. Sports organisations are underfunded and end up becoming circular/annulation like organisations in which athletes parents, loved ones, family, etc get involved and take up senior positions. I've seen it happen before.
Even outside of my personal experiences, the stories about athletes having one of their parents as a head coach are pretty infamous, or just famous, depending on how good the athlete is. I don't think anyone cares that Armand Duplantis' coach is his dad for example, he's the world record holder. However, you could argue that when this happens in more "subjective" sports, that there is a high potential for cheating, especially in organisational positions outside of coaching. There's a strong argument there.
When I was in middle school, the quarterback of the football team was this short, rotund kid, absolute opposite of your archetypal QB (he was also an asshat). His dad, however, was the athletic director at the county’s high school.
Firm believer in the idea that this sort of asshatery is directly influenced as a shortcut to putting in the actual work
Social shortcut too. His dad got a different job somewhere else before high school, and it was quite satisfying hearing people who were his “friends” start talking about how he really was a dick.