Nearly all of Oregon’s sports teams have called it a year by now, with only a handful of sports still pushing all the way into late May.
That’s not to say the University’s performance in the latest Academic Progress Rates has been anything but a win for the Casanova Center.
Not one team came in lower than the 925 average used by the NCAA to track student-athletes’ progress throughout college. Each athlete can score two possible points for their university, but both can be taken away for either leaving the school or not staying academically eligible.
The NCAA equates 925 (out of a possible 1,000) to a graduation rate of 60 percent.
In academic terms, appropriate for the report card, that’s barely passing.
After a year in which Oregon football dropped below that mark, the team jumped to a score of 953 this year.
That helps the team’s average move to 935, four below the national average of football teams.
Better yet, women’s golf was a perfect 1,000 and men’s and women’s basketball were first and second in the Pac-10, respectively, with their rankings, although the departure of Kamyron Brown from the men’s basketball team should knock a point off the men’s total next year. As it stands right now, both programs rank in the 80-90th percentile in the nation and within their own sport.
The men’s score, 975 over the last four years, is a full 42 points higher than the national average during that same time for the sport.
You can say what you want about Ernie Kent’s program on the court. But his handling of his players’ futures off it is more than commendable.
Across the board, all but football cleared the standard with space to give. Volleyball was 970, and softball’s 986 ranked in the 70-80th percentile of all sports, as did lacrosse’s identical 986.
In a big-picture sense, this helps Oregon market itself as not only an institution that keeps track of its athletes, but a place where they usually want to stay, as well.
We know already of Ernie Kent’s three-year plan for his athletes. Based on what we hear from him, it is a useful recruiting tool to let families know their sons will have their degree in three years. But let’s not boil this down to one program – everyone passed and that’s a great thing for the Ducks.
You have to feel that maybe this goes a little deeper, too, between the much-publicized rift between academics and athletics here. Yes, it is true the NCAA is mandating this data be kept to keep track of athletes, not UO itself.
Maybe it’s too simple to think so, but this would seem to hearten the academic side of the University to think athletes won’t – OK, can’t – blow off classes. They’re held to a higher standard.
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