The NCAA released its annual Academic Progress Rate report on Wednesday and the numbers were encouraging for the Oregon athletic department, particularly for the Oregon football team.
“Most of the sports were above the averages, and you’ve got to feel good about that,” said Gary Gray, the senior associate athletic director of compliance and academic services. “Overall, we’re comfortable with it.”
The APR is a relatively new formula used by the NCAA to show student athletes’ real-time progress on a term-by-term basis rather than with a generic graduation rate. Each student-athlete can earn or lose two points each term, one for meeting academic requirements and another for returning to school.
The number of points earned is then divided by the number of points possible and multiplied by 1,000 to compute the final total.
The football squad scored 931 for the 2005-06 academic year, up from 900 the previous year, and narrowly avoided losing two athletic scholarships.
Oregon needed to score at least 930 on this year’s report to avoid the penalty after successfully filing a waiver to avert the loss of two scholarships last year.
“It is (a substantial improvement) from the standpoint that the first two years of that were not very satisfactory, so you’ve got to build from that,” Gray said.
Bill Clever, assistant athletic director for compliance, said he is pleased with the improvements though the squad just cleared the 930 mark.
“We were shooting higher than a 930,” Clever said. “We knew that the 930 was the basement. That’s as low as we wanted to go. But we wanted to go as high as we possibly could.”
Oregon’s three-year average in football – the APR was instituted in the 2003-04 academic year – is now 912, which ranks second to last, ahead of only Arizona (883), in the Pacific-10 Conference. The average among all Div. I football teams is 931.
Oregon’s average must be at or above 925 after next year’s results, the first year without the squad-size adjustment – a safety net put in place by the NCAA to help institutions ease into the new APR metric without being immediately assessed penalties with a lack of a full, four-year set of data available.
Any squad that misses the cut of 925 next year will not be allowed to replace student athletes who leave the school this academic year not having met academic requirements and having eligibility remaining
“Day in and day out, kids have to continue to focus academically,” Clever said. “So, just because we’ve improved substantially, doesn’t lessen the need for our kids to perform in the classroom.”
Clever added that the improvement this year, particularly in football, is due to multiple changes, particularly with an athlete’s mindset.
“Historically, student athletes knew they had to be eligible by August,” Clever said. “This APR…has required them and it’s required us to focus on each term individually, which is good.”
The NCAA reported generally improved APR scores and fewer penalties across the country in almost all sports.
Oregon exceeded a three-year average of 925 in every sport except football and men’s outdoor track and field (924).
Twelve of the 18 different Oregon teams included in the APR exceeded the Div. I average of that particular sport.
The Oregon men’s basketball team’s three-year average is tops in the Pac-10 at 974 and above the Div. I average of 927.
The men’s golf team also scored 974. The highest score on the women’s side was the golf team with 1000. Both the tennis and indoor track teams scored 990.
“I guess for lack of a better gauge, you look and see how you’re doing against your other peers,” Gray said. “You look and see that your above the all division (one) average and sometimes above public institutions, which we are.”
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