2009 Div I Academic Progress Reports

[EQguy]

Re: 2009 Div I Academic Progress Reports

There definitely needs to be adjustments made. Minnesota lost football scholarships in part because they booted the 4 players involved in a sexual assault off the team and they left school.

One thing. These four were only the ones to drop Minnesota below the threshold. There had to be others before to get the scores below the threshold.

[zooropa]

Re: 2009 Div I Academic Progress Reports

you better have the resources to support them academically and financially

OTOH, the article raises a legitimate point about scholarship splitting in FCS and the issues that raises with retention.

Additionally, there is no transparency to the waiver and exception granting process. There is simply the assurance that an 'improvement plan' was filed.

The idea of the APR isn't bad, but to assign the same point values for the loss of eligibility and retained eligibility (under certain circumstances) is not a reasonable measure of academic PROGRESS.

I mean if you're going to treat retention the same as eligibility, just call it the Athletic Retention Rate, not academic progress, because the metric as currently implemented weights retention significantly over progress.

[Hammersmith]

Re: 2009 Div I Academic Progress Reports

OTOH, the article raises a legitimate point about scholarship splitting in FCS and the issues that raises with retention.

Additionally, there is no transparency to the waiver and exception granting process. There is simply the assurance that an 'improvement plan' was filed.

The idea of the APR isn't bad, but to assign the same point values for the loss of eligibility and retained eligibility (under certain circumstances) is not a reasonable measure of academic PROGRESS.

I mean if you're going to treat retention the same as eligibility, just call it the Athletic Retention Rate, not academic progress, because the metric as currently implemented weights retention significantly over progress.

You're pretty much wrong on that. Academic progress makes up the bulk of the APR. How do you maintain academic eligibility? You take a full load of courses, you pass them, you maintain a GPA level that increases during the 3rd and 4th year, and you complete an increasing percentage of the courses required for your major. Sounds like academic progress to me. And maintaining that eligibility is fully 50% of the APR score. On top of that, if you stay in the program, you have to complete the above requirements, so much of the remaining 50% of the APR is also tied to academic progress.

As for splitting scholarships in FCS football and its effects on retention, I don't care. The lion's share of NCAA sports have exactly the same problem. Heck, most of the non-revenue sports have to split their scholarships to a far greater degree than FCS football. All I see in that article is another example of the inferiority complex that a small number of FCS "journalists" (most of which work for Ralph/AGS/CSN) have when anything FBS comes up. If you can't afford to help the students financially(directly through scholarships or indirectly through helping the students find jobs - real jobs, not the Rhett Bomar kind), then you need to decide if DI scholarship football is right for your school. How many of the FCS schools on the penalty list even give out the scholarship max of 63? Again, if you can't afford to support the students you're recruiting, then recruit different students or drop the program. I have no sympathy for the type of whining in Burton's article.

[zooropa]

Re: 2009 Div I Academic Progress Reports

You're pretty much wrong on that.

If a player leaves the program (no longer competes) but retains eligibility (makes satisfactory progress) the program loses a point.

If a player loses eligibility (does not make satisfactory progress), the program loses a point.

Therefore, lack of satisfactory progress is penalized the same as leaving the team and making satisfactory progress.

Hence my assertion that the metric favors -retention-, in that it treats ALL reasons for leaving the team the same.

Now if you did something as simple as change the maximum number of points per semester to 3, and subtracted 2 points for loss of eligibility and 1 point for leaving the program -with- eligibility (e.g. transfer/quit the team), you would be weighting academic progress (maintaining eligibility) over the loss of eligibility.

IMO, that'd be a simple fix that could still be used on the NCAA's ludicrous 'grade inflation' scoring index (where 92.5% = 60%)

As for splitting scholarships in FCS football and its effects on retention, I don't care.

I'm kind of picking that up.

OTOH, football isn't like, say, tennis or golf, in the time demands and the competition for roster spots and playing minutes, so the assertion that 'scholarship splitting is a problem everywhere' is a bit disingenuous. It asserts that there's no meaningful difference between being the 90th guy on the football squad and the 10th guy on the golf team.

IMO, a system that dings a program more for loss of eligibility than for transferring or quitting the team would address many of the legitimate concerns raised in that article.