...or than goodness Saban was and Miles is serious about academics... This is about the new requirement for academic progress and how it will effect schools that are not producing graduates. It will make coaches look very hard at "projects" who may not finish at their school. http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/stories/MYSA022705.10C.NCAAqanda.e89f97de.html
Reported in the birmingham paper today in big article that Alabama will stand to lose 9 scholarships in football after the 2005 year if their grade average does not improve. The football team was in the 10 to 20 percentile.. THIS IS HUGE!!!!! Auburn stands to lose 1 in basketball basicly due to the transfers leaving with bad grades. This report will be published tomorrow. Am going to the advocate to see if anything was reported on LSU today.
The thing I don't get is, whether these kids graduate or not - aren't they better for having gone to college? By NCAA limiting scholarships, it seems like they are punishing the athletes. They need another way around trying to put more emphasis on academics.
I agree. It's typical "throw the baby out w/ the bath water" NCAA reasoning. If your program loses 3 scholarships, what's happening is that 3 prospective student-athletes, who in all likelihood are very deserving, will be penalized for the transgressions of their predecessors. It's similar to programs being put on probation for violations that may have happened 10 years ago...the players and coaches at the school today are innocent, but they still have to pay the price for what happened in the past.
If an athlete decides to stop playing, sit out semester, then returns and graduates, it still counts AGAINST the school. Baseball is going to be sport hurt the most by this; the draft with many players leaving after their junior year. Athletes have always been held to a higher standard than the general student population. Yes, college is better than not going, but the presidents need an out to feel good. It is much easier to spout academic integrity than admit it really is all about the money.
Here's a pretty good article in The Advocate this morning on this grade stuff, and how it may affect LSU. I'm not sure how I feel about all this. Could be good, but could also be very damaging to an athletic program. No penalties will be imposed until the 2005-06 school year at the earliest. However, in the future there will also be "historically based penalties," which could include additional scholarship losses, recruiting restrictions and exclusion from postseason competition. "This new method has some merit, but it is harsh," LSU Athletic Director Skip Bertman said. "We're all worried, and that was the intention." According to the NCAA numbers released Monday, none of LSU's four major athletic programs achieved the necessary score of 925 in 2003-04. The football program was the closest at 923, followed by baseball (889), women's basketball (887) and men's basketball (812). Despite those numbers, football, baseball and women's basketball generated high enough scores to fall into what the NCAA calls a "confidence boundary," which indicates a range of scores within which the true APR may reside when the system is in place. The confidence boundary is a short-term condition which will be phased out during the initial four-year window. The men's basketball program could lose a scholarship if it does not improve its APR next year. The program's low APR is primarily a reflection of the number of transfers that left the program in 2003-04. But John Brady's program is also an example of how the new method provides some equity compared to the old system. Although the LSU men's team has suffered some attrition, most of the departing players were generally on solid academic ground. As a result, most of the transfers would have counted at least as a +1 instead of an 0-for-2. In the past, transfers who left a school only had a negative impact concerning academic data and had no positive impact on graduation rates. The full story ... The Advocate
