Complexities in College Recruiting.

We can all insert our own version about the great player who was an average to poor student .... anyone who has been around the game for awhile has seen that one....

But the NCAA has put some teeth into recruiting marginal students for D1 sports. I'll try to simplify a very complex topic.

3 years ago, the NCAA decided to take academic reform very seriously. They determined (and rightly so) that the primary interest of an academic institution was academics (d'oh). They have proceeded down a long road in order to make sure that the college realize the importance of academics.

We now have some new terms in college recruiting.

APR: Academic Progress Rate

When you look at a player's progress towards a degree (academic progress) in order to see if he/she is on track to graduate within 5 years. If Joe Smith is taking basketweaving 101 for the 4th time, even if he keeps making all A's, he's probably not on track to graduate in a timely basis. You get points for keeping your players academically eligible and academically on-track. You also get points for retaining players (more on this later). If a student drops out due to academic reasons, you will take a hit. After add/subtracting, etc etc etc, the passing score for the APR is .....

925: Minimum Score to pass and avoid penalties

If you score below 925 (out of 1000) in a particular sport you will not be allowed to replace (for 1 year) the grants-in-aid (a.k.a. Athletic Scholarships) for players who left the program because of academic standards and were academically in-eligible. These players are referred to by a borrowed baseball term of ....

0 for 2: Academically ineligible and left school

The worst of all worlds to the NCAA. Yes, you get your score penalized if a player isn't eligible, but if you also lose the student, then you are subject to ...

Contemporaneous Penalties: Let's just call it a one-year Strike 3

You have an 0-2'er and you cannot give that athletic award to a new player for one year. You must "eat it" and go with a lower scholarship availability for one year. Of course, you may have exception circumstances and be hit very hard. In that case you cannot lose more than ....

10 Percent Rule:

No more than 10 percent of the total athletic awards at an institution can be lost via Contemporaneous Penalties in one season. Now, with any penalty system there are calculated exceptions. One of these is the ...

Confidence Boundary:

This is a purely mathmatical term, used in statistics (which isn't really math at all, but that's another thread). If you have a very small team size, single season variations, affecting a single athlete may push you over the boundary. Of course, there is also the other side of the pillow. When you have a team that doesn't meet academic performance standards over many seasons, you can be subject to ....

Historical Based Penalties:

Though these right now are just threatened and not actually written down and spelled out yet, the NCAA promises that:

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Always, on this site, we try to determine what the implications are for current High School players.

1). With the continued stressing of academic performance by the NCAA, it is becoming imperative to get your academic house in order. If a particular program has had some minor trouble and it's score is borderline to the 925, they might have to pass (or lower the award offer) to a marginal student. A mistake can hurt them for several years, not just one.

2). Points are deducted from a program now for athletes who are eligible but not retained. An example is a transfer to another facility. It's a great example of "non-retention". In the past, in baseball, it was normal for a player to be able to transfer without penalty once and not have to sit out a year. Now, that same athlete who transfers out while academically eligible will have a negative score on the institution. Spending time with players and getting to really know them will become critical. In order to diminish the potential impact of transfers out, it would not be surprising to me to see team sizes become smaller.

3). Turning pro in baseball after the junior season is an example of someone being eligible but not retained. Points will be deducted from the team if you go pro. For the average, mid-size D1 or D2 program, this won't be to much of an issue. Having 2 players drafted from a mid-size D1 won't kill their score. Having 6-7 drafted could drive it into the ground. It could become one for the huge programs like South Carolina who have a lot of players turn pro every year. The NCAA will have to address this.

How do they count the points?

It's pretty simple... You have 2 points/semester possible per athlete.
1) Are you academically eligible? Includes on track to graduate.
2) Were you retained in school or did you leave?

When you look at a first semester player who "flunks" out, he's the example of the 0 for 2 mentioned above. 0 points earned out of 2 possible.

Add up all of the actual scores ... add up all of the possible scores. Divide one by the other. Passing grade is 92.5% ... there is no rounding except rounding DOWN....

Final example:
The basketball team has 13 scholarships (I know, I hate it too). They have 3 guys flunk out and end up with a score of 800 (80%). Since the NCAA "caps" the penalty at 10%, they would loose 1.3 scholy's, but it's always rounded UP to the next highest number. Based on the 0-2 rule, they would have lost 3. In reality, they will lose 2.

Players: Think about it.... are you doing everything you can to make yourself a good candidate for their school? You need to start in the 9th grade and hit the books.

Note: My job description, given to me by Braves requires me to make at least one "hit the books hard" post per season, but I'm such a fanatic on this particular topic that I do it every chance I get. Guys, we can't repeat it enough ... grades are critical!!!!

 

Thanks for the great info Pops. You are right, getting your house (grades) in order is by far the most important area a future college student should spend their time. We can never emphasize this enough. I love the attitude of the player that uses baseball to gain his education vs the other way around.

Although I have been very critical of the NCAA and of the many college presidents whose job description has been reduced to one of ( donation seekers), treat college as a business. Do your job to prepare for it.

 

NCAA Graduation Guidelines

Great post and the initial results from schools all over the country are showing up in local newspapers today. I have a couple of questions for you.

In revenue sports that are fully funded from a scholarship standpoint, a lost scholarship usually equates to one player. In baseball, one scholarship can equate to multiple players. So if I understand this correctly, a sport such as baseball can be seriously affected by this new rule.



One other quick question, I understand that if a player leaves the program for any reason, the school is penalized. College baseball is a sport where some players begin to fall off the team their junior and senior years because of various reasons. If a player wants to become a doctor, but feels baseball just zaps too much time, so he leaves the team to devote more time to his studies. Is the team penalized even if he stays in that same school, but isn't a part of the program any longer?

 

Baseball is one of the rare sports where you have fractional scholarships that are athletically granted. If you remember the basketball example ... lets say a team has a 920 next year and has one player who is a 0-2'er and on a partial scholarship. If the team funds 8 scholy's, by the 10% penalty, they will be punished .8 scholarships, rounded up to 1 full scholarship.

No, there are not any penalties in this situation. The NCAA's objective is to get you to graduate, not play ball. You meet both of the criteria... #1, you are academically eligible and #2 you are still in school. They fact that you drop athletics the next year doesn't matter provided you return to school.

They are going to be phasing this into a 4-year rolling total for each institution, but it's going to take until 2008 to get there completely. Starting next year, penalties will be imposed on non-performing institutions.

 

IMO - It is no great revelation - but more stringent academic requirements for college athletes are obviously long overdue.

For decades - we have watched a very small group of athletes, colleges and the NCAA administrators make alot of money - at the expense of a valid education for college athletes who were good enough to play college ball (any sport) - but had no future in any of the games professionally.

The colleges - and the NCAA - turned their head and their eyes - took the money - and watched 98% of all of these athletes play some great ball - and graduate with garbage.

98% - and that is conservative.

For all you young men out there. Pursue your dreams - even if they are professional in nature. But make sure you do what you are supposed to do for YOUR OWN future - and not for the future of the college or the NCAA.

Make sure you pay as much attention to your studies as you do to your sport - because for 98% of you - whether it be basketball, football, baseball or anything else - it will end after college.

Make sure you get an education. Many people arent even fortunate enough to have that chance.

End of my silly sermon.

 

I am all for ensuring that the student athlete is supported by the school that is benefiting form his play and gets an opportunity to get a quality education that will assist him in getting a job and helping him become a viable member of society.

In theory this should be a great advancement for the student-athlete, BUT here is what I fear:

1) That schools will simply make adjustment to their curriculum to push the student athlete through, give him a diploma, and NOT give him an education. A couple of examples of changes made by a fine academic institution in our area. Duke University previously had a curriculum that only required 96 credit hours to graduate (numerous athletes, including a least one of their star basketball players were enrolled in the program). When the papers got wind of this Duke made changes. They changed the credit hours assigned to each class, not the class itself. Nothing really changed. Was it a viable curriculum (I define that as something that, when completed successfully, give the individual a chance to compete for a quality job)? I’m not really qualified to judge but 96 hrs is not a lot when it took me 122 to graduate and the average at the school was roughly 120. Duke at one time also had and may still have a curriculum that you could graduate in three years (hey, I could barely graduate in 4 & ½ and I beat a lot of people out). Athletes populated this curriculum also. Not slamming Duke here, But if Duke will make adjustments like these, what are some of the other schools doing? To me, pushing a student athlete through the system and handing him a semi-worthless piece of paper is no better than keeping him eligible just so he can play football, or basketball or whatever. What I want is for the NCAA to ensure the education given is from the main stream educational process and not some contrived program so the jock doesn’t tarnish the school’s image and cost the school scholarships.

2) Schools will quit taking chances on marginal athletes and possibly deprive them of the chance for a decent education. What about the athletes that perform marginally in high school and then perform well in college. I myself, performed better in college than I did in high school. Perhaps it was because I matured (or at least I think I did) later but I did get a degree, an advanced degree and a decent job. What about those kids that are denied that chance because some administrator feels “if he cann’t do the work and quits or transfers, it might drop us below the 925 and tarnish our image or cost us a scholarship”.

I hope these two things do not happen because in the first case the student athlete gets swept under the rug just like they do now, in the second, the student athlete that truly wants to better himself will be damaged. I would much rather see the NCAA going into each and every member school and reviewing the curriculums (that the athletes generally migrate into). They should be able to tell a college, "this program is a bunch of junk, get something real", they do it to high schools all the time and tell the high schools the courses taken by Joe Jock was not to their standards of eligibility, why cann't they do that to the colleges. Also, they should review the support programs, and the reporting processes, and the solutions the school has in place for these athletes to ensure that they don't fall through the cracks and get a real chance at a quality education and are student athletes – not just jocks.

The NCAA has a history of addressing the symptoms but not the disease.

Sorry if I sound negative but I just do not trust the NCAA. As the old saying goes, “The NCAA got so mad at Kentucky that they put Wichita State on probation”.

 

Every player that reads the board needs to realize that college athletics is a full-time job in addition to going to school. The amount of work involved isn't for the faint-hearted or uncommitted.

MVaughn, I agree with your concerns about the potential lessening of opportunities for the marginal student / very good athlete. When you have outstanding athletes, exceptions will be made, but the outstanding ones are truely rare.

In the olden days it wasn't uncommon for good Old State U to allow their football players to take freshman level courses, not progressing towards a degree. They also invented courses open only to the football team, like Old State U theory of the Zone Defense as preferred by Coach Wood. This kind of academic fradulence is exactly what the NCAA is attempting to eliminate. It's much more prevalent in the money sports. Now you have to be making progress towards a legitimate degree.

But the NCAA put in a catch that may hurt some players who attend JUCO's. You have to be on track (5-year plan) to receive a degree from the college you are transferring to in order to be eligible. You need to have a 4-year college in mind when you go to a JUCO. Check with the guidance office of the JUCO and determine which courses will transfer, etc to the area universities and colleges. College X may take a course while College Y won't. It may depend on the review of the Course Syllabus.

You must have a declared major by the end of your sophomore season and have completed 40% of the course work towards your major in order to keep your academic eligibility. I have a niece who changed her major 3 times in college. She was at the University of Maryland and went from Physics to Fashion Design to Pre-Med. Luckily, she wasn't an athlete. If she had been, when she left one course of study for another the amount of progress towards her newly declared degree would have been used as the standard of measurement. Early on, many closely aligned degrees (Computer Science versus Mathmatics) have the same undergrad classes, so those kind of switches aren't a real problem.

When Universities have shortened courses of study (like your afore-mentioned 96 credit hour major at Duke), they better be prepared to defend them to the NCAA as being legitimate. They risk having every student in that major being declared academically ineligible. Then, when they compute the scores with all of the ineligibilities revealed, they risk losing scholarships. Duke might not care about their baseball scholarships, but I bet they'll work to protect those basketball ones.

 

NCBallFan;
I heard that this new rule will even penalize a team who has a player in GRADUATE SCHOOL who elects to leave before finishing that degree. Have you heard or determined if indeed that is true? If so, to me that is going a little overboard in policing.

Personally, I feel Grads vs. Undergrads are two different animals. If an Undergrad has completed his work and earned a degree, as could very easily be the case for a player that red-shirted, then plays ball that last year and then calls it quits, who does it really hurt?

 

In the States that offer monies through the lottery such as Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, they can circumvent this by placing many of their players on Hope Scholarships, etc....

Whatever rules are set up...there are always ways to get around them, if the schools so choose.

Until the NCAA and the University presidents display integrity vs hypocracy, no amount of posturing on their part about rule changes to ensure student-athletes will have much credibility. DON'T GET ME STARTED!!!!!!!!

 

Lets continue the stretch down to HS about this Academic Reform package....

The standards for college athletes now push down into HS. The difference is in the number and nature of the core courses that must be completed over the 4 years of HS in order to be academically eligible to compete as freshman. It's being phased in, starting with the 2005 HS grads and should be fully implemented in time for the 2008 HS Grads.

The initial interest in college athletics is almost always expressed before a child/student-athlete enters HS. As a parent, if you student has a desire to continue competition beyond the HS age, you need to meet with the Guidance Counselor at his school while still in the 8th grade in order to map a meaningful course of study that will allow for a well rounded student-athlete who has met the full course of study for initial freshman eligibility.

• You may not be able to take weight-lifting for 4 years in HS, preparing for your sport.
• With the increasing globalization of the economy, more Colleges are requiring more foreign-language requirements to graduate.
• For baseball in particular, partial scholarships are the norm. In order to qualify for many other scholarships, they look at your community involvement and charitable activities. It's difficult to balance those actions with a full-time sports schedule, but you need to REALLY WORK AT IT. Just being a good student and a good athlete will exclude you from many other scholarships unless you "are well rounded".

Obviously, if you look at the state of Georgia, the situation down there in most sports will be completely different than in NC. In state students get this huge tuition assistance. They don't need scholarships, so losing them to NCAA regs doesn't matter. These states are going to have a competitive advantage for the next several decades.

If I had a 8th grader, and worked near the state line, I'd be tempted to move to SC and commute for the next 5 years.