The NCAA Academic Justice Smackdown

On the left- Kelvin Sampson and Indiana University. On the right- Rich Young and the University of North Texas. Which school weighs heavier on NCAA Lady Justice's scale?

Earlier this week, the NCAA released Academic Progress Rate reports for 2006-07. The Academic Progress Rate, more commonly referred to as APR, is a tool the NCAA uses to measure how well Division 1 colleges and universities are doing at keeping student-athletes on track to graduate.

For each team the school sponsors, every scholarship athlete gets evaluated every semester in two categories: Eligibility and Retention. If a scholarship athlete finishes the semester academically eligible, they score a point. If they stay at the same school, they score a second point. The APR score is the total points scored by each team's scholarship athletes divided by the total possible points. Multiply the ratio by 1000, (i.e.: a .9 becomes a score of 900 out of 1000) and you've got an APR score.

If you're curious how any Division 1 school performs academically in any sport, click here and take a look. It's very interesting reading.

Specifically, I'd like you to take a look at the APR report for Indiana University. See their APR score for Men's Basketball? It's an 899. That's bad. That's somewhere between the 20th and 29th percentile among all NCAA Men's Division 1 Basketball teams. That's in the bottom 10% of any team in any sport in the entire NCAA.

The bad news for Indiana is that any APR score under 925 makes you eligible for NCAA penalties and sanctions. But the good news for Indiana comes in the form of a teeny-tiny number 3. It's the superscript next to their abysmally low APR score, and it directs the reader's attention to the third footnote:

3 - Denotes APR that does not subject the team to historical penalties due to the team's demonstrated academic improvement and favorable comparison based on other academic or institutional factors.

What does that mean? Is Indiana University overrun by mental defectives? Feebleminded idiots? Students in constant danger of drowning on their own saliva?

No, that's not the case. My family used to live in Indiana. The people there are not only very intelligent, they are also very friendly. And Indiana University is a fine academic institution. Nobody could realistically claim that there is some flaw in the academic foundation of Indiana University that undermines the academic mission of the school.

Could the problem be institutional? Could there be a systemic flaw that makes their student-athletes incapable of getting a decent education? To me, it doesn't appear so... Heck, there's only one other team that finished below 925- Men's Baseball. And they were practically passing; they had a 924. Close enough! No penalties for them, either!

So that must mean that their shameful 899 is an IMPROVEMENT over their past performance! And looking at their 2006 APR report, that seems to be the case. Indiana's Men's Basketball APR for 2005-06? 890.

So... what was their penalty for the 890? If you guessed "Nothing", you guessed right!

~ Denotes APR that does not subject the team to historical penalties due to the squad-size adjustment. The "upper confidence boundary" of a team's APR must be below 900 for that team to be subject to historical penalties. Squad-size adjustments will be eliminated when the fourth year of APR data is collected, provided the team's multiyear cohort includes 30 or more student-athletes.

What the hell does that mean? What's a "squad-size adjustment"? According to an NCAA release:

• Because the four-year data aren't available yet, the APP will apply a squad size adjustment to team APRs for the purposes of applying penalties. The adjustment helps ensure that low-performing teams are accurately identified given the smaller than intended data set (i.e. less than four years).

• While the NCAA is working toward a rolling four-year APR for each team, the adjustment will prevent some teams from being unfairly assessed a penalty in the short term.

• The three-year data set being released in May will have some teams below 925, a rate that subjects teams to possible immediate penalties. Treating the squad-size adjustment as a safety net and not using a score below 925 as a signal for immediate academic reform may result in more serious penalties when the squad-size adjustment is discontinued in 2007-08.

So from what I can make out, because Indiana Basketball was so exceptionally terrible at keeping Men's Basketball players academically eligible and enrolled once the NCAA finally started applying some standards, they get a waiver at first (due to sample size) and then get waivers because they're improving from the inconceivably unacceptable baseline they set for themselves at the start of the program.

Way to go, Indiana! If you suck badly enough at educating your athletes, it'll be easier to make incremental progress and demonstrate improvement. If you leave yourself almost nowhere to go but up... The improvement you show will earn you leniency from the NCAA.

It doesn't matter that your atrocious score of 890 went up a whopping ONE PERCENT to 899. That's still improvement. No sanctions necessary.

Now take a look at the 2006-07 APR report for the University of North Texas. Unfortunately, North Texas received a 924 APR score for Men's Basketball, finishing one point below the acceptable level. That's equivalent to one tenth of one percent. One point out of one thousand.

If you're the Indiana University Baseball team, a 924 is nothing to worry about. Just say you're sorry, wash the dishes after dinner, and all is forgiven.

But if you're the North Texas Men's Basketball team... Say goodbye to one of your scholarships.

Fans of the Mean Green can probably name the small handful of players who transferred to other schools after the 2007 NCAA Tournament berth. All but one of them enrolled at other colleges or universities, because only one of them was academically ineligible at the end of the semester. I'm not identifying anyone as an academic slacker, but I will say that if I were in charge of compliance at the University of Hawaii, I'd worry about whether my new prize recruit will make my APR score will go down like he did at Oklahoma State and North Texas.

But one academic casualty transfer was not enough to drop North Texas below 925. There was one final knock that dropped the APR score to 924.

For anyone who's never heard of Rich Young, I encourage you to check out what Katie Couric's CBS Evening News said about him last March.

Seriously, people... It's a good story and Katie is desperate for an audience.

Okay, if you're too busy to be bothered... Rich Young was a crucial part of the 2007 NCAA Tournament team from North Texas. But before that, he was a Sergeant in the U.S. Marines. In the words of the CBS Evening News:

Young signed up straight out of high school, passing up two scholarships for military life.

"It was a challenge for me, and I didn't really feel mature enough for school at the time," Young says.

Instead, Young went to war in Iraq. A sergeant, he helped guard convoys from surprise attacks along a road known as Ambush Alley.

After completing his military service, Young wound up at North Texas. He took school so seriously that he chose to serve his country until he felt capable of handling the academic challenge. But according to ace reporter/TY Sports superfriend Brett Vito:

[UNT Compliance Director Daryl] Simpson said UNT applied for a waiver from the NCAA because former guard Rich Young had to travel home to Pennsylvania multiple times during the 2006-07 season while his mother was sick. The NCAA denied UNT’s request that would have pushed its men’s basketball team well above the 925 mark.

Young will graduate this summer, which will help UNT’s score.

Because a 26 year old Iraq War veteran took it upon himself to tend to his sick mother during the school year, North Texas fell below the 925 point threshold.

By one point.

And because the NCAA chose not to grant a waiver, even though Young is scheduled to graduate before the leaves are off the trees... North Texas loses a scholarship.

Is it fair to compare North Texas to Indiana?

I feel it's important to clarify at this point that the reason the NCAA uses APR rather than GSR (Graduation Success Rate) is to avoid penalizing member schools who lose academically eligible athletes to professional sports careers. APR is used so that schools are evaluated and sanctioned on the basis of how well they keep kids eligible and keep kids at their school. Non-academic issues (like getting drafted into the NBA) don't influence APR scores, unless an athlete was academically ineligible at the time they left school to pursue a professional career.

The rules are set up to avoid penalizing the Indianas of the NCAA world for losing athletes to pro careers.

Why did I choose Indiana Basketball? It was actually just a random stroke of luck that the story fits together so perfectly. I looked up Indiana first (and only) because they were recently charged with 5 major NCAA recruiting violations.

According to USA Today, they'll find out whether they'll suffer any NCAA sanctions for the recruiting violations sometime in July or August.

If you're a gambler, I'd suggest the smart money is on Indiana getting off the hook without any serious penalties.

Now, I don't know who might have gotten that last Basketball scholarship at North Texas. I can always dream, but I'll never know for sure.

But one thing we do know for sure is that the NCAA has taken bold action to protect the integrity of our beloved University of North Texas.

There is now absolutely no chance that scholarship could go to another Marine Sergeant and war veteran who's devotion to his sick mother might cause him to fall slightly off track and delay his scheduled graduation until this Summer.

Instead, that scholarship is going to nobody.

And thank goodness for that. Justice is served!