National Collegiate Athletic Association

NCAA News Archive - 2010

back to 2010 | Back to NCAA News Archive Index

Jun 9, 2010 1:57:19 PM

The steadily increasing Academic Progress Rates posted by Division I teams – translating to more student-athletes achieving in the classroom – are the biggest success of the Academic Performance Program.

But the creation of the Academic Performance Program and its implementation in the intervening years have produced many other positive outcomes, including a shift in the integration of athletics and academics, a dramatic upswing in the performance of baseball student-athletes, and the ability to create groups to concentrate on challenges within specific sports.

The very culture of Division I sports has changed because of the Academic Performance Program. Presidents and chancellors, administrators, coaches, and faculty all understand the ramifications of the Academic Progress Rate, which measures the current academic performance of individual squads by assigning one point for eligibility (if the student-athlete is eligible to compete the following semester) and one point for retention (if the student-athlete remains at the institution) and adding the total for a team APR.

Acronyms like APR, and words and phrases like "eligibility," "retention" and "0-for-2" are part of the everyday vocabulary in athletics departments now. Athletics directors talk regularly with coaches – and coaches do so with their student-athletes – about the importance of going to class and succeeding academically. If they don't, and the team APR falls, they know penalties will be assessed.

"The most important thing now is the awareness every coach in America has about academic achievement and expectations," said Pete Boone, athletics director at Mississippi and a longtime member of the Committee on Academic Performance. "It's not just getting to the Cotton Bowl. It's getting your guys graduated. That's what coaches are starting to understand. From the chancellors and presidents to the athletics directors to the conferences, we're really focused on that. It will be a part of your success or failure."

One incentive the presidents on the Board of Directors gave to coaches was the head coach APR portfolio, a database that will be made public this summer to provide details of the APRs earned by teams associated with a head coach. The portfolio provides an easy way for athletics directors, presidents and others to determine the past academic performance of an individual coach's teams. Some ADs have taken the portfolio idea a step further and written APR clauses into coaching contracts.

Whether every coach in the NCAA can explain what an "0-for-2" is or understand the difference between an eligibility point and a retention point is not what matters to CAP chair Walter Harrison, president at Hartford. Rather, he is concerned about whether the way people think about sports and participation in Division I athletics has changed. Gone are the days when coaches worried only about wins and losses and simply keeping their kids eligible to compete. The APR ushered in an era in which academic achievement is much more valuable.

"They understand that they have to pay attention to the academic progress of their student-athletes," Harrison said. "That's very reassuring to those of us who have worked so long on this."

Baseball success

When APR data were first released, they revealed some startling trends, including a tendency for baseball student-athletes to underperform in college. When paired with the relatively strong academic profile of baseball players coming out of high school, the trend was troubling. Baseball was the first sport to use a new NCAA strategy – establishing a working group to focus on APR issues in a specific sport.

The baseball group's work produced changes that include academic certification for student-athletes in the fall term to be eligible in the spring, a limit of 27 counters, requiring individual aid packages to be at least 33 percent athletics aid, and eliminating the one-time transfer exception for baseball players.

Since the changes were implemented in 2007-08, average, single-year APRs in baseball have increased from the 940s to the 960s. The changes improved the sport overall, and many individual teams went from facing penalties to meeting benchmarks.

Jack Evans, a member of CAP and the baseball working group, said part of the reason for the success was its foundation in data. That data helped identify problems (like the volume of transfers) and let the group begin to devise ways to solve them. The group stressed to the Board that each element was inter-related and must be passed as a package, a message the Board heard and agreed with, passing the package as a whole in April 2007.

"The specific remedies weren't  universally accepted at first, but most from the baseball community were embarrassed by what the data had revealed and were willing to try something new," said Harrison, also a member of the baseball working group. "Without a doubt, that has been a resounding success. Baseball's progress since the new standards have been adopted is remarkable and something the entire sport should take great pride in."

Working groups

Baseball's turnaround was precipitated by the work of a diverse group (coaches, faculty, administrators and presidents) brought together to study a specific sport. That strategy has since been employed, to varying degrees of success, in both football and men's basketball. Additionally, the Women's Basketball Issues Committee is examining its APR numbers, and a group of people from the wrestling community organized to devise a plan for improving the academic performance of wrestlers.

Each sport has a different culture and places different demands on the student-athletes who participate. The unique nature of some sports – and the tendency for some student-athletes who play them to struggle in the classroom – often demands a specialized group dedicated to studying those problems.

Tom Burnett, commissioner of the Southland Conference and member of both CAP and the Football Academic Working Group, said the working group approach has been successful.

"You can't think that what's good for football is going to be good for basketball," Burnett said. "Different sports require an individual look from specific stakeholders. The NCAA has done a good job with that."

The groups can call attention to problems in individual sports (like men's basketball), even if the recommendations that a group makes aren't eventually adopted. The work of the men's basketball group, with some recommendations submitted separately into the legislative cycle and others waiting to be finalized, has not met with the same success as baseball.

The reasons vary. The problems in basketball, beginning with a weaker academic profile for basketball players coming out of high school, are more difficult to solve at the collegiate level. Basketball's status as a high-profile, revenue sport makes it more difficult for people to vote to change it.

"To be honest here, while I think everyone involved is a person of good will, everyone wants to make sure the other side doesn't get an advantage," Harrison said. "Really, there's a lot of disagreement about how to proceed."

Another thing the working groups have brought to light has been the importance of making data-based decisions. Harrison lauded the NCAA research staff, and said its ability to provide sport-specific data helped the working group approach make sense.

"We know enough to be able to apply data to sports and say why certain sports behave this way. It's not opinion. It's data," he said. "If you've got the data, why not differentiate from sport to sport because of the various conditions student-athletes face in those sports? We're much more sophisticated now regarding what we know about student-athlete success. We ought to use that and apply it sport by sport."