A subcommittee of the Division I Board of Directors denied Jacksonville State’s final appeal of a postseason ban for its football team based on the team’s historical academic performance.  The ban will be in place for the 2009 season.

The university’s football team earned the postseason ban because it was subject to historically based penalties for the third consecutive year under the NCAA Academic Performance Program.   

The university first appealed the penalty to the Division I Committee on Academic Performance, which denied the request and notified the university on May 12. The university then appealed to the Division I Board of Directors’ APP Historical Penalties Appeals Subcommittee, which denied the appeal and notified the university on June 10.

Every Division I sports team calculates its APR each academic year, based on the eligibility, retention and graduation of each scholarship student-athlete. Teams that score below 925 on their four-year rate and have a student leave school academically ineligible can lose up to 10 percent of their scholarships through immediate penalties.

Teams also face historically based penalties for poor academic performance over time, defined as scoring below 900 APR on their four-year rate and failing to show significant, sustained improvement or meet other factors.

This is the fourth year of immediate penalties and the third for historically based penalties. Teams facing a third year of historically based penalties can be banned from postseason play, in addition to scholarship losses and restricted practice time.

Next year, institutions could confront restricted Division I membership for the entire athletics department, including a department-wide postseason ban, if a team has four consecutive years of poor academic performance.