It gets easily forgotten, but this is college football. Of course, college football is nothing more than a glorified minor league, but the guys still have to go to class and at least pretend to try.
Welcome to the Academic Progress Reports, better known as the APR, taking a look at the classes from 2006-2007 to 2010-2011. Every Division I sports team calculates its APR each academic year, based on the eligibility, retention and graduation of each scholarship student-athlete. Programs that score below 925 (this is the Mendoza line ... if you can't hit this, you're just not trying) on their four-year rate and can lose up to 10 percent of their scholarships through immediate penalties. Programs that dip below 900 - there weren't any this year - face additional sanctions and can also face historically based penalties for poor academic performance over time.
Below are the rankings for the FBS teams based on their APR and with our scoring for how they graded out. We categorized the teams into ten categories. If a program was in the 90-100% range, it gets a 10 (for our Program Rankings to come out later this summer), while a program that finished in the 1-10% range gets a 1.
10 is obviously amazing, anything 7 or above is fantastic, and 4 or below is miserable.
Past APRs 2011 | 2010 | 2009
10 – an APR of 90-to-100%
“Old lady had her tested once. They said her I.Q. was way up there. .. around 200 or some such (bleep). That girl could do just about anything she put her mind to."
1 Northwestern 995 2 Boise State 989 2 Duke 989 4 Ohio State 988 5 Northern Illinois 987 6 Rice 986 7 Clemson 983 7 Middle Tennessee 983 9 Rutgers 982 10 Air Force 980 10 Miami 980
9 – an APR of 80-to-90%
“Hi, Gilbert. I'm a nerd too. I just found that out tonight. We have news for the beautiful people. There's a lot more of us than there are of you."
12 Vanderbilt 978 13 Boston College 977 13 Stanford 977 15 Wisconsin 975 16 Georgia Tech 974 16 UCF 974 18 Navy 973 18 TCU 973 18 Wake Forest 973 21 Florida 972 21 Missouri 972 23 Kansas 971 23 Penn State 971 25 Oklahoma 970
8 – an APR of 70-to-80%
“Moles and trolls, moles and trolls, work, work, work, work, work. We never see the light of day. We plan this thing for weeks and all they want to do is study. I'm disgusted."
“Oh I get it, it's very clever. How's that working out for you? Being clever."
40 Toledo 960 41 Mississippi State 959 41 San Jose State 959 41 Temple 959 41 Utah State 959 45 Baylor 956 45 UCLA 956 47 Oregon State 955 47 Pittsburgh 955 49 Colorado State 954 49 Western Michigan 954 51 Illinois 953 51 UAB 953
6 – an APR of 50-to-60%
"My mocabulary isn't inept enough to even define what 'it' is."
51 West Virginia 953 54 East Carolina 952 55 Arizona 951 55 Bowling Green 951 55 Hawaii 951 55 Kentucky 951 55 Marshall 951 55 Western Kentucky 951 61 Purdue 950 61 Syracuse 950 63 Iowa 949 63 Nevada 949 63 Ohio 949 63 San Diego State 949 63 Washington 949 68 Fresno State 948
5 – an APR of 40-to-50%
"Today ... on First Take."
68 Arkansas State 948 68 Louisiana Lafayette 948 68 Oregon 948 72 UNLV 947 72 USC 947 74 Ball State 946 74 Louisiana Tech 946 74 Texas A&M 946 74 Texas Tech 946 78 Virginia 944 79 Kansas State 943 79 Michigan 943 79 North Carolina 943
4 – an APR of 30-to-40%
"Facebook at $38? Get in NOW!"
79 Auburn 943 79 Michigan State 943 79 New Mexico 943 85 Central Michigan 941 85 SMU 941 87 Cincinnati 939 88 Colorado 938 88 Iowa State 938 88 North Texas 938 91 Arizona State 937 91 Florida State 937 91 Texas 937 94 Arkansas 936
3 – an APR of 20-to-30%
"As in Helsinki, Sweden."
94 California 936 94 Wyoming 936 97 Eastern Michigan 935 97 Kent State 935 99 Florida International 934 99 Idaho 934 101 Akron 933 101 Ole Miss 933 101 Washington State 933 104 BYU 932 104 Memphis 932 104 Minnesota 932 107 Maryland 931 107 NC State 931 107 Tennessee 931
I will admit that I just skimmed the methodology part, but no Ivies? They're all D1, and since they're pretty crappy at football and don't give out sports scholarships, I'd imagine they aren't really attracting the not-so-smart but really, really good at football crowd.
yeah its just D1A schools. The former "BCS" schools, whatever they are called now.
Fun fact- two attorneys at my firm played football for their respective Ivies. Hence, why they are attorneys and not football players.
Post by keweenawlove on Aug 21, 2012 10:47:58 GMT -5
We were D2 but I'm pretty sure our football team was pretty high on the list. We don't send many players to the NFL but the most recent started last year and also has a degree in mechanical engineering. The starting QB from when I was there is now in PT school.
I'm pretty surprised at how low we are on that list considering that we're a good school and I always thought our football team wasn't as good because we had too high of standards.
Apparently not.
I did have some classes with a few football players and they were very lazy and didn't put forth an ounce of effort. They withdrew from the class and probably had to take it again during summer school.
There's a lot more to APR than the intelligence of the student-athletes or the academic quality of the school.
One of these factors is that a school gets penalized if a player transfers out before graduation. If a player transfers to a new school and graduates from the new school, the original school gets no credit for that. So ... there are lots of situations that can cause a drop in APR that have nothing to do with the smartness of players or academic quality of the school. For example, if a school has a coaching change that leads to a higher-than-normal transfer rate, the school's APR will take a hit. If a player leaves college early to go pro and ends up finishing his degree at another school, his original school will take a hit on its APR.
And ... just because someone plays a sport at an Ivy or some other school with a reputation of high academic standards, doesn't mean he/she is smart and destined for a stellar non-athletic career. Often times, student-athletes have different admission standards. Schools don't like to admit this, but it happens. All the time. I worked with a hockey player at my school who was offered full rides a multiple Ivies, since they were willing to overlook her lack of academic credentials, things that would have been expected of non-athlete students. She ended up coming to the state university I work at because we have a better hockey program. She was an elite hockey player (Olympian), but is as dumb as a box of rocks, and left school after 3 semesters because she couldn't maintain a 2.0 gpa to remain eligible to compete in athletics. Yet multiple Ivies wanted her. Says a lot about the Ivies :-)
Post by statlerwaldorf on Aug 21, 2012 14:06:58 GMT -5
Mine is #4. The football players I knew were pretty dumb, but smart enough to take the easiest classes. I had an American history class that was full of football players. It was the easiest class I've ever taken.
There's a lot more to APR than the intelligence of the student-athletes or the academic quality of the school.
One of these factors is that a school gets penalized if a player transfers out before graduation. If a player transfers to a new school and graduates from the new school, the original school gets no credit for that. So ... there are lots of situations that can cause a drop in APR that have nothing to do with the smartness of players or academic quality of the school. For example, if a school has a coaching change that leads to a higher-than-normal transfer rate, the school's APR will take a hit. If a player leaves college early to go pro and ends up finishing his degree at another school, his original school will take a hit on its APR.
And ... just because someone plays a sport at an Ivy or some other school with a reputation of high academic standards, doesn't mean he/she is smart and destined for a stellar non-athletic career. Often times, student-athletes have different admission standards. Schools don't like to admit this, but it happens. All the time. I worked with a hockey player at my school who was offered full rides a multiple Ivies, since they were willing to overlook her lack of academic credentials, things that would have been expected of non-athlete students. She ended up coming to the state university I work at because we have a better hockey program. She was an elite hockey player (Olympian), but is as dumb as a box of rocks, and left school after 3 semesters because she couldn't maintain a 2.0 gpa to remain eligible to compete in athletics. Yet multiple Ivies wanted her. Says a lot about the Ivies :-)
Pretty much all of this. I HATE APR. understand the intent, but dislike how unequally the resources are distributed to achieve success. For example, major schools can usuall afford tutors and to send athletes to summer school. Smaller schools need to try to get athletes through classes in the regular academic year. He next step in this report is to ask "how much money is spent per 10 APR points?"
Also, Bosie State in the top 10? Bull shit. Probably because the guys are doing well in their diesel mechanics Or arc-welding classes. Yeah... Compare the academic rigor of Northwestern to Boaie State Junior College...
I went to Northwestern--one of our favorite football cheers was "Our SATs are higher!"
I can remember watching a televised game once and laughing at the player introductions--the opponents were overwhelmingly physical education or communications majors. The NU player? Chem E, pre med, biochem, econ, math....you get the picture. Rwal majors as no one had any illusions of playing pro ball.