The group working on developing an incentives/disincentives structure in Division I took a giant step forward at its April 3-4 meeting in New Orleans when it reviewed comprehensive data from a pilot study conducted in March.

Data collected from almost 90 percent of Division I institutions on more than 22,000 student-athletes over a six-year period will help the group composed largely of Division I Management Council members determine a metric that defines academic-progress standards and serve as the foundation upon which rewards and penalties will be based.

That metric, called the Annual Academic Progress Rate (AAPR), will be a much more "real-time" measure of academic success. Currently, academic success is gauged by the federally mandated graduation-rates methodology, which many people in intercollegiate athletics believe paints an inaccurate picture for many programs since it does not take into account student-athletes who leave programs in good academic standing.

The pilot study does take such attrition into account, which will provide the working group with a much clearer snapshot of the "culture" regarding retention, eligibility and graduation in various sports. The study tracked student-athletes in football, baseball, men's and women's basketball, and men's and women's track and field -- and the data revealed all academic outcomes, from athletes who competed and graduated at the same school, to athletes who transferred and graduated somewhere else, to athletes who left the program and would not have been eligible had they stayed, to athletes who left to play professionally but were in good academic standing at the time.

Now that the data are in, however, the challenge for the working group is formidable: how to weight eligibility, retention and graduation to develop an AAPR that is simple to understand and yet has a measurable impact. That includes determining at what point in the AAPR rewards are warranted and at what point penalties are necessary.

"We're focusing on how we can use the AAPR to help us assign incentives and disincentives," said Vanderbilt University Athletics Director Todd Turner, who chairs the working group. "The data from the pilot study proved to be interesting, but now it's time to figure out how we want to weight the three components (eligibility, retention and graduation) to achieve our goals."

More accurate methodology

The working group has asked that the data be configured in various ways for comparison purposes. For example, some AAPR models assign extra weight to graduation, which obviously favors teams and programs whose players complete their education by donning a cap and gown. Other models weight retention, rewarding programs that experience little attrition.

"If graduation is the desired outcome," said Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice-president for membership services, "then what relationships do eligibility and retention have on graduation? You can weight those factors to reach an optimal outcome."

"We're solid on the three components that should be included in the AAPR," Turner said. "But determining how we should weight them to achieve the best measurement of academic progress is still under consideration."

The immediate good news with whatever AAPR is developed will be a more accurate depiction of academic success. NCAA members, particularly coaches, have been frustrated with the federal graduation-rates methodology for several years. While the AAPR won't replace that measure (unless the government chooses to do so), it will provide some "reputation relief" in many instances.

"Once coaches learn that the measurement for determining incentives and disincentives is not graduation rates as they are currently defined, they're much more receptive to the concept of developing rewards and penalties," said Turner, who was among presenters on the subject at the National Association of Basketball Coaches meeting at the Men's Final Four. "In talking with coaches individually, in fact, I get the sense that they would like to see the image of college basketball upgraded and enhanced through these initiatives. If the incentives/disincentives structure would help us do that, then they'd support it.

"The negative comments we've been hearing about the incentives/disincentives structure so far primarily are a result of a misunderstanding about how we're measuring academic success. It's a fact that the federal methodology does not reflect actual conditions. The AAPR will."

Lennon said another fear is that the AAPR will "catch" teams and programs it wasn't designed to single out. In other words, otherwise academically successful programs may experience anomalies that would show up on the AAPR and thus be subject to perhaps unjustified penalties. But the incentives/disincentives structure has an incremental approach, beginning with a warning and escalating to harsher penalties for continued problems. There also is an appeals process for programs to rely on when warranted.

"What we want is a measure that addresses the habitual underperformers," Lennon said.

Disincentives outweigh incentives

Turner said one of the AAPR's challenging nuances is taking into account the diversity of academic missions among Division I institutions. What to one institution might be "normal" academic success may be an apples/oranges comparison with another institution.

"For instance," Turner said, "Vanderbilt is a highly selective university with high graduation rates for all students -- in the 80th or 90th percentile even under the federal methodology. An open admissions institution may have graduation rates for all its students in the 30th percentile. So how do you judge a 30 percent graduation rate at one school against an 80 percent rate somewhere else?"

In that regard, Turner noted the group is looking for a rate that is flexible. But, Turner said, "there will be a point at which no matter what kind of school you are, the performance is unacceptable."

The group also is working on developing the various incentives and disincentives to be used once the AAPR is established. So far, members have considered access to NCAA assets (for example, championships, revenue) as the basis upon which a rewards and penalties structure would be based. Teams and programs performing at high academic levels could be rewarded with additional athletics scholarships or recruiting benefits. The disincentive flip side would be reductions in scholarships, revenue shares or even access to NCAA championships in extreme cases.

Right now, the group is working under the notion that three years of AAPR data (beginning with the 2003-04 academic year) would need to be collected before the structure takes effect, but members also are considering more immediate incentives and disincentives, including possible restrictions on the time period in which an institution may re-award a scholarhsip originally awarded to a student-athlete who left an institution and would not have been academically eligible had he or she returned.

Another challenge for the group is trying to find incentives that are as meaningful as the disincentives. A system weighted toward disincentives could be construed as overly negative, which is not the image the working group wants to project.

"We're not looking to be punitive -- what we're trying to do is improve the academic success rate of our student-athletes," Turner said. "But it's difficult to develop a symmetrical list of incentives and disincentives. There's no incentive you can give someone that can compare with keeping them out of the championship."

In some ways, the greatest incentive in the structure will be to avoid receiving a disincentive at all.

"You do hear the comment that the biggest incentive is not to get a disincentive," Turner said. "While that's often said tongue in cheek, the reality is exactly that. The incentives in some ways are going to be symbolic. There may be some tangible ones, such as access to additional revenue or more recruiting benefits, but nothing compares to losing scholarships, being denied access to championships or actually losing revenue shares."

In the end, Turner hopes that what his group is working on will be purely supplemental to the bigger picture -- that is, strengthened initial- and progress-toward-degree requirements already adopted for the entering class of 2003. He said those standards, which increase the rate of progress student-athletes must make in order to establish and maintain eligibility, are the biggest incentives the NCAA has.

"In my opinion, the impact of what the incentives/disincentives working group is doing is actually a fail-safe for the increased progress-toward-degree standards," he said. "If those work as they are intended, you're not going to see a lot of schools running into problems with the AAPR and the incentives/disincentives. It's a little early to judge whether the standards are going to do that, but they certainly have that potential."

Turner's group will meet again at the end of this month to work further on the AAPR and to complete a position paper that will be distributed to the Division I membership in time for spring conference meetings.

"It's important for us to circulate our thinking and solicit input," Turner said. "If coaches, conferences and other groups can contribute to changing the culture, then that's what we're looking for. At the end of the day, the beneficiaries will be our student-athletes."