By Tracy F. Harris
A report released by the NCAA in mid-February has some universities worried about losing scholarships.
The report was the NCAA’s first ever Academic Progress Report (APR), which tracks scholarship athletes’ grades and whether they remain at the university.
The preliminary report, since universities have the opportunity to make corrections, was more of a “warning,” said U of L Assistant Athletic Director Christine Simatocolas. “It shows where you’re headed.”
The University of Louisville has nothing to fear, according to Simatocolas.
She is the one in charge of tracking the academic performance of athletes — there’s a two-inch black binder on her desk that documents every student on every sport’s roster.
Those documents are used to report each student athlete’s academic eligibility for the next semester and whether the student returns the next semester.
So, at the end of each semester, Simatocolas reviews student athletes’ grades and determines their eligibility for the next semester. Then, at the start of the next semester, she can check and see which students returned and which didn’t.
Each student athlete is eligible for four points each year, two per semester: one point for academic eligibility, and one for returning. A student who is academically ineligible and doesn’t return to the university is said to be “0-for-2” on the semester.
However, to get the point for returning to the university, a student doesn’t have to remain an athlete -— just come back and take classes. The APR is all about retention of students, not retention of athletes.
That data is reported to the NCAA each semester, starting with the 2003-2004 academic year. Eventually the APR will average four years of data, but right now contains just the last two years.
For each sport, and then for the university as a whole, the total points are calculated and then divided by the number possible. It’s like finding the percentage for a test score, only the NCAA multiplies by a thousand instead of a hundred.
The actual APR report, available at http://www.ncaa.com, is pretty easy to read.
It gives a breakdown, by sport, for the Division I average, Division I section averages, public and private school averages, and the university’s average.
U of L’s overall score was 950 out of 1000, which was two points above the Division I average and six above the Division I-A average.
U of L scored perfect 1000s (like getting 100 percent) in men’s cross country, women’s basketball, field hockey, softball and volleyball.
That means every player on scholarship on those rosters was academically eligible and returned to U of L every semester for the past two years.
The APR establishes a “cut” boundary at 925 — roughly equivalent to a 50 percent graduation rate, according to the NCAA’s Web site. Teams below that boundary could suffer penalties.
Which teams might be at risk? The only two teams below 900 are men’s basketball and men’s golf. However, men’s golf has an “upper confidence boundary” of 925 or above.
According to the NCAA’s Web site, “Small sample sizes of some teams can lead to reduced confidence in the APR as an estimate of academic performance for those teams. That is particularly true with only one or two years of data. Confidence intervals, commonly used in statistics, roughly represent a range of scores within which the true APR likely resides.”
So as long as a team’s upper confidence boundary is above 925, the team won’t be subject to penalties.
The confidence boundary is a temporary tool to be used until more data is available, according to the Web site.
The men’s basketball team doesn’t get the benefit of the confidence boundary, which makes it the only team at U of L that could be subject to penalties.
Basketball is one of the three sports the NCAA predicts will face penalties. Football and baseball are the other two. U of L’s football team had a score of 950 and baseball 930.
For all the NCAA schools, 28.6 percent of all football teams are below the cut in the current APR, 23.2 percent of baseball teams and 18.7 percent of men’s basketball teams.
An Associated Press story said there are 5,270 Division 1 teams and that 410 could face penalties. The AP story also calculated that “about half of the nation’s Division 1 schools have at least one team facing sanctions.”
Simatocolas said that all the sports at U of L should see higher scores this semester and at the end of fall semester, however.
Universities were also given the month of March to make revisions to their data; Simatocolas said several students had been left out, and once they were added in, U of L’s score would be even higher.
The penalties are probably the most difficult part of the APR to understand. A team can lose no more than 10 percent of its maximum financial aid, according to the NCAA’s Web site. A team can only lose more than that if there are penalties carrying over from previous years.
The NCAA gave the following example: the NCAA maximum number of basketball scholarships for one year is 13. Team X uses 11 scholarships a year.
A penalty of two scholarships is charged on the team and deducted from the NCAA maximum.
That means the team can only use 11 scholarships, which is the same it had before.
Also, if a team has used all its scholarships before the penalty is announced, the team can delay the penalty to the following year.
That prevents students from losing scholarships mid-year or mid-semester.
Simatocolas said the biggest effect the APR will have will be on recruiting. It’ll make coaches more hesitant to take risks, she said.
Coaches will have to consider the student’s chances of graduating before offering a scholarship, she said.
Simatocolas also pointed out that the athletic graduation rate is higher than the university’s overall.
The four-year class average from fall 1997 to spring 2001 was 45 percent for athletes — and 33 percent for the entire student body.
