One of the most consistent concerns reverberating from the rollout of the APR is the perception -- or misperception in some cases -- that losing student-athletes who are in good academic standing to the professional ranks unfairly puts teams in harm's way of a contemporaneous penalty.

While the APR does reward retention as much as it does eligibility (one point each per student-athlete per term), the point is to maintain student-athletes' academic progress regardless of their career track. And the reason retention carries as much weight as eligibility is because both are the primary research-proven indicators of graduation.

Still, some are questioning the fairness of APR scores taking a retention hit when student-athletes leave for reasons beyond the institution's control, especially if they are academically eligible.

Dave Keilitz, executive director of the American Baseball Coaches Association, believes baseball may have a legitimate beef in that regard. Because of unique rules that allow players to sign professional contracts after their junior year, and because of the size of the Major League Baseball draft, baseball faces attrition issues no other sport does.

According to Keilitz, in fact, about 5 percent of Division I baseball student-athletes sign pro contracts every year. That's about 500 of 9,600 players annually. Keilitz said in comparison, about 250 of 25,000 football student-athletes sign professional contracts, and in basketball the number is only about 60 of 5,500.

"If it wasn't for the pro draft in baseball, a lot of these teams that aren't up to the APR cut line would be," Keilitz said.

Compounding the issue, Keilitz said, is that baseball experiences a high number of transfers, about 250 to 300 annually. He said that's partly because baseball is an equivalency sport, which makes it easier for movement.

"It's not easy to transfer if you have a full ride," he said, "but if you're getting just books, or a semester of board or something similar, it makes it very easy to transfer because it's not a significant financial loss for the student-athlete. We may agree that we don't want the number of transfers to be that high, but it's a fact because of those circumstances.

"Most other sports don't face those kinds of transfer numbers, and no other sport has the early signing factor baseball has."

The APR data show, however, that as long as academic eligibility is maintained, it would take a significant number of early departures to subject a team to contemporaneous penalties. Further, even if a team is below the 925 threshold, contemporaneous penalties would not be assessed unless that team had an 0-for-2 student-athlete. That means that teams can avoid trouble as long as they keep players on track academically.

"The easiest way to avoid penalties is to have student-athletes who are academically eligible," said University of Hartford President Walter Harrison, who chairs the Division I Committee on Academic Performance (CAP).

For a typical Division I baseball roster of 35 players, for instance, the team could lose up to about one-third of those student-athletes for whatever reason, as long as they were in good academic standing, and still meet the bar with the help of the squad-size adjustment that is being applied in the early years of APR calculation. However, a team with such attrition wouldn't be able to absorb the additional loss of eligibility points and stay in bounds. In many cases identified by the 2003-04 APR data, that's precisely what's happening.

To illustrate the point, say, a baseball team with a roster of 35 that would have to post an 895 APR to make the jump over the 925 bar with the squad-size adjustment applied, earns 104 of 118 total APR points possible. The 14 lost points are spread among 12 student-athletes -- nine left the institution in good academic standing; two left ineligible and one stayed with the program but was ineligible. That means the team lost 11 retention points and three eligibility points for an APR of 881.

If that team had earned just two more
points, its APR would have been 898 (106/ 118), which would have put the team above the contemporaneous-penalty cut after the squad-size adjustment is factored in. In such a case, someone could argue that the nine student-athletes who left the program in good academic standing unfairly subjected the team to penalty. However, it also could be argued that if the two 0-for-2 players had been eligible, that, too, would have put the team in APR safe harbor (both because they would have earned back the lost eligibility points and because they wouldn't have been 0-for-2 players).

"It's important for student-athletes to continue to make progress toward degree even if they desire to become professional athletes," said Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice-president for membership services. "You'd have to have a lot of 1-for-2s who go pro to put a team below 925, so those teams that are below 925 even with the squad-size adjustment applied may be there more for academic reasons than because of a high number of athletes who turned pro."

Keilitz agreed that coaches always need to pay attention to academic performance. "If we have programs losing scholarships because they have a lot of kids who are ineligible, then you can't defend that," he said. But he also noted that some of the higher-profile baseball programs lose seven to 10 players in some years to the pros.

In such cases, particularly if the program in question is one traditionally steeped in academic performance, that team could appeal its case to CAP, which could interpret the case as an anomaly year for the institution and apply a waiver of contemporaneous penalties.

But NCAA President Myles Brand warned against neglecting academic progress based on an assumption -- whether by the student-athlete or the coach -- that a professional athletics career is imminent.

"Only a handful of players go pro," he said. "The attrition we're seeing may be more because of an assumption on the part of players who desire to go pro that they in fact will make it and thus do not need to concentrate on academics. That is why we are holding institutions and coaches accountable for that academic progress, as a safeguard against such an assumption."

Lennon added that academic progress, even for the most high-profile athletes for whom a professional career may not be that much of an assumption, is still a good idea because a degree will be that much more obtainable once the athlete's professional career ends.

Keilitz said he supports the intent of the APR but that those administering it should be prepared to address any unintended consequences.

"There has not been a baseball coach who has complained to me directly, and we're certainly not against good, high academic standards," he said. "The APR has a lot of good features, and it will help academic performance because it will make programs review their practices. However, baseball has some unusual circumstances that other sports don't. If a program is below the cut score because of signees or transfers, and now they lose a kid because of an 0-for-2, that's an unfortunate circumstance."