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More than 700 teams' academic scores fall short; UA football program among those facing penalties
Published on Wednesday, May 07, 2008
From staff and wire reports
NCAA President Myles Brand wants college teams to be concerned as much about academic scores as final scores. If they aren't, they might be barred from NCAA tournaments.
Brand warned underachievers Tuesday they could get hit with the NCAA's harshest sanctions — fewer scholarships, reductions in practice and even a postseason ban. Nearly 150 teams face potential scholarship losses, and another 26 are on the brink of a postseason ban because of poor academics.
''Academic reform is here to stay, and those penalties resemble what we give for major infractions. So these are serious penalties and there are a number of teams that received those,'' Brand said after releasing this year's Academic Progress Report. ''Yes, there are individual institutions who have seen a steady decline [academically] over the last four years, and for them, the situation is dire.''
Brand was mostly pleased with what he saw in the report.
Overall scores improved by four points since the NCAA began collecting data in 2003. Scores also are up in 26 out of 29 sports over the past four years, and fewer teams were penalized than even NCAA officials expected last year. One reason was the substantial academic improvement made by baseball and football players. Those sports increased their average scores by 12 and 11 points since 2003, respectively, which equate to graduation rates in the mid-60s.
There was plenty of reason for concern, too.
More than 700 of the 6,272 Division I teams fell short of the mandated cut score of 925 to avoid penalties, and 218 were assessed punishments ranging from warning letters to reductions in practice times. Some were granted waivers, while others showed enough improvement to avoid penalties.
The University of Akron — in football — was among the schools missing the 925 mark.
The penalties facing the football program, after gaining a partial waiver from the NCAA, include limiting initial athletic scholarships to 24 and limiting athletic scholarship renewals to 80 (a loss of five).
UA said in a news release that it already had fulfilled its initial penalty (24 initial athletic scholarships) during the 2007-08 academic year. Also, UA already has fulfilled a portion of its second penalty by not renewing three athletic scholarships in 2007-08, while completing its second penalty phase in 2008-09 by not renewing an additional two athletic scholarships.
''We have already installed a monitoring program for the football program as we anticipated this score,'' Director of Athletics Mack Rhoades said in a written statement. ''We have engaged our coaches and student-athletes to correct these results. They [the coaches and student-athletes] are aware of the importance of the APR and understand we must improve.
''All of our student-athletes, regardless of sport, understand they must go to class and be a student if they are going to participate in athletics at the University of Akron.''
UA's football program has an APR of 920. It is subject to penalties because members of the program left school in the last academic year either ineligible or by exhausting their five-year eligibility clock without graduating.
Schools facing possible postseason bans include football teams at San Jose State, Southern and Temple, and men's basketball teams at New Mexico, Centenary and East Carolina.
Get the full article here.
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