According to this SI story, LSU is one of the worst at graduating its football players. I thought since Saban arrived that LSU was graduating over 50%. Does anyone have the correct figures. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/writers/mike_fish/09/12/ncaa_report/index.html
This flies in the face of all the stats I have been hearing about. Prior to Saban this was probably true. However I know for a fact ALL the seniors on the current LSU team are slated to graduate this year. I think they are using old figures. Which would not suprise me. Accuracy and integrity has never been around at ole SI.
Graduation rates are so misleading. 1) I would guess somewhere between 50% and 75% of the football players would not be admitted to LSU if they could not play football. 2) Graduation rates for athletes are always higher than the graduation rates for the student body as a whole.
Our six-year graduation rate is temporarily down because of the horrible player attrition rate of the DiNardo era. That's what happens when you recruit players with poor work ethic in the classroom and serious character flaws to boot. Last year's high six-year figure was mostly the last Hallman recruiting class. Say what you want about Curley, but he tried hard to ensure that players graduated and that he ran a tight program off the field. I expect our numbers to be back up to the 60% level in two or three years, when Saban's recruits, who to my knowledge have handled their classroom business well, start graduating.
I have no idea how accurate it is, or where it comes from, but they posted a stat on the bigscreen during the game Saturday that said LSU's football graduation rate was second in the SEC last year. One of those statistics is either blatantly false, or, if they are both accurate, SI's is extremely misleading about the current academic state of the football program.
On the Jumbo-Tron's this weekend, LSU AD stated that LSU's football graduation rate was the 2nd highest in the SEC last year. This is verifiable.
