For Once on the Football Field, Duke’s Looking Down at Everyone Else in the ACC
Yesterday, the NCAA released its annual APR rates, which evaluates just how well institutions encourage actual “student athletes” to progress through school and graduate. As you may have heard, it’s caused some controversy around college sports, specifically because it penalizes schools for transfers, and schools see additional penalties if players don’t complete classes after declaring for the draft (more common in basketball than football, really). Additionally, Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim doesn’t care for it one bit, which is good enough for me to hate it, too.
Given the ACC‘s sense of academic stature, ratings like these should not be much of an issue, though. Out of a score of 1000, all you have to do is maintain at least a 930 (very few institutions were unable to do this during the 2010-11 evaluation period). And yet, a couple ACC schools struggled mightily. Two were just one point above the cut line, and another three finished under 950. Overall, however, the league still managed the highest average (the 12 current schools had a mean score of 961), and scholarly overachiever, Duke, had the second-highest football score in FBS, at 989. Northwestern was tops in FBS at 995 (!). The full ACC team breakdown for you:
Duke: 989
Clemson: 983
Miami: 980
Boston College: 977
Georgia Tech: 974
Wake Forest: 973
Virginia Tech: 968
Pittsburgh: 955
Syracuse: 950
Virginia: 944
North Carolina: 943
Florida State: 937
Maryland: 931
NC State: 931
A couple thoughts:
- Very surprised to see Clemson up that high. There weren’t a ton of FBS schools above 980, so being in that type of company shows their efforts to improve have paid off.
- Also shocked at how low Virginia’s scores were. A 944 is not great at all, especially for a “public Ivy” like UVa. If I’m the Hoos, I’m disappointed by that figure.
- NC State and Maryland were dangerously close to the 930 cutoff line. The last thing this league needs is teams missing the postseason for academic reasons.
- There isn’t a huge correlation between being a private school and scoring high either. The league’s private institutions were spread from number-one (Duke) to nine (Syracuse), with plenty of public schools mixed in between.
If you’re interested in seeing more on APR, feel free to play around on the NCAA’s handy site for quick tabulations. For graphical representations of the results, consult Team Speed Kills, and the helpful visuals put together over there.
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Maryland is up from last year (it had a small penalty because of APR the previous year). That is (most likely) part of the reason that Randy Edsall was brought in to run the Terps. I expect Maryland’s score will rise in the future.
Definitely don’t doubt the institution, which is why I found it so surprising. Curious to take a look at how Edsall improved APR over time at UConn though, to back up your theory.
For the years he was at UConn the entire academic year (this is the multi-year rate): 974, 963, 950, 951, 949, 953. The last year (when he left in December): 963. It did trend downward, I suppose, but he kept it respectable the entire time he was there. I’m not sure he’ll ever crank out Duke-like numbers, but I expect that he’ll make sure they keep up their work in the classroom.
I’m surprised that UNC’s & UVA’s numbers were relatively low, although I suppose that it’s not quite as surprising given the problems at UNC (although that in itself was not expected).
Right, For UNC the unexpectedly low number is at least believable. I’ve heard and seen plenty about UVa’s on-field improvement under Mike London. But not much on the academic front. I’d hope he’s not sacrificing one for the benefit of the other.
I haven’t sat down with the full FBS scores, team-by-team, but I’m curious about the correlation between APR score and on-field success (if any).