As a representative of an NCAA member institution and among the many professionals proud of college athletics, I must raise the question concerning the focus and direction of our newest gauge of academic progress, the Academic Progress Rate (APR), and the resulting misinterpreted public relations nightmare that has befallen college baseball in particular.

With no exception, everyone in college athletics, especially baseball coaches, applauds any effort to increase opportunities for success in our classrooms. We value the need to be more watchful and diligent in monitoring improvement of academics for our student-athletes. The recently unveiled measuring tool not only distorts the effectiveness of our efforts, but does not accurately measure success in the classroom.

Student-athletes in baseball (and other sports beyond football and basketball) are permitted a potential waiver of the one-year residence requirement, allowing more than 500 baseball student-athletes in baseball this past year to transfer in good academic standing, yet their original institutions were penalized one retention point for each transfer. Secondly, baseball loses more undergraduate student-athletes to the professional draft than any other sport (more than 300 this past season), most of which left in good academic standing, as well.

Those two situations combine to make a distorted comparison to other sports and most importantly to the cut score of the APR. Coaching staffs, academic counselors and administrators, no matter how diligent or creative they may be, have no influence on those actions or the resulting point loss in the APR. It is hard to understand the relevance of this process to any academic enhancement or gauge of efficiency. The only thing seen is a senseless misinterpretation of our programs to the media and the public that headlines poor academic health in collegiate baseball, when in reality, these programs would be among the best and the brightest with a more logical interpretation of the retention point concerning transfers and signees in good academic standing.

The national newspapers criticized sports with the most programs below the 925 score, with baseball sadly singled out and seen as having student-athletes who don't succeed in the classroom. We have put an undeserved black eye on a group of athletes that are among the best representatives of our respective institutions. The old saying, "we have met the enemy, and the enemy is us," rings loud and clear in this case.

NCAA President Myles Brand referred to "change" as the key ingredient to these new tools for accountability. Someone needs to explain how these "changes" can be constructive to our mission. What constructive change of culture can our coaches, our counselors or administrators make to alleviate this perceived problem with no solution? College baseball is a "well-coached and well-disciplined team," but we can't "execute" what President Brand says unless the rules are fairly written.

Further, there is interest by some among the Division I Board of Directors to reduce the opportunities to compete in baseball, in part, to be sure because of these misguided APR statistics. It is incomprehensible that any policy-making group would penalize the student-athlete who is a good student and good citizen because of a flawed reporting system that doesn't accurately measure the academic progress of our programs.

One would hope that there can be a more logical methodology to track baseball and equally hope that this misrepresentation does not motivate our presidents to think these student-athletes need fewer opportunities to enjoy their sport in order to succeed in the classroom.

Charlie Carr is a senior associate athletics director at Florida State University and chair of the Division I Baseball Committee.