APR Reports Generate Anxiety and Relief

The NCAA released its Academic Progress Reports (APR) for every school and the teams for each sport. A total of 6110 teams are included. You can view each school's individual report (they are in PDF). The APR is supposed to be a rolling 4-year average, but the NCAA isn't at that point. This is only the third year so there are adjustments and leeway given to some teams. The grace period is granted only if they are showing that they are closing on meeting the magic number of 925 by the time the 4th year is reached. (The APR records started being kept in the 2003-04 school year.)

If a team is at 900 or so, they won't be getting penalized immediately. The penalties can range from warning letters, practice restrictions, lack of access to postseason competition, restricted membership and loss of scholarships for the teams that don't meet performance standards. Already, teams across various collegiate sports have been penalized with scholarship losses.

The BCS schools for football and basketball, generally are in good shape. Only a few programs are facing scholarship reductions. Many are close or have been warned, but scholarship reductions are rather limited. Some of the notable teams penalized after this latest report:

Iowa State University, Basketball -- 2 scholarships
University of Cincinnati, Basketball -- 1 scholarship
San Jose State University, Football -- 7 scholarships
University of Arizona, Football -- 4 scholarships
UNLV, Football -- 3 scholarships
University of Toledo, Football -- 4 scholarships

Iowa State basketball was hit hard under the tenure of Wayne Morgan and the shake-out of many players after his termination. Considering that players often leave when coaching changes happen, this will have an impact on the hiring and firing of coaches -- and the timing as Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News noted.

So a university trying to improve on-court performance can't just consider whether its coach won enough games in his third year on the job. It has to factor in whether moving him out will be sufficiently disruptive to lead to a slip in APR performance. That can lead to embarrassment -- ask Bob Huggins about what a dubious 0 percent grad rate did for him at Cincinnati -- and the competitive disadvantage of losing scholarships, practice time and possibly postseason eligibility.

Presidents and athletic directors must begin to consider whether firing that coach is worth the cost not in contract buyout dollars. They should examine whether it puts their school in APR jeopardy. And they should inform their boosters there are other factors to consider beyond an elusive NCAA Tournament bid.

I think DeCourcy may be overstating things a bit. Simply because wins and losses are still the thing that matter most to athletic departments, fans and the boosters. It may, however, act as something of a drag on rapidly pulling the trigger in some cases. Especially as at schools that have been struggling to get their APR up to the minimum level. That may cause some hesitation to at least give time to make sure that the next coach won't have more leverage in negotiating if sanctions loom.

That point, however, is still a distance away. Not until penalties are regularly assessed and it is clear that penalties will apply regardless of the school and their athletic prestige, will schools realistically consider the potential risk.

Presently, the hardest hit programs at the moment are coming from the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and at schools located in the State of Louisiana (strong correlation to Hurricane Katrina that sent students to other schools). These programs were granted a warning letter to show improvement by next year considering the circumstances.

There were some bright spots in football and basketball. The NCAA also recognized programs that had very high APR. In basketball this included: