23 of 56 Bowl Teams Fail to Meet New NCAA Academic Standards
By Brad Wolverton, The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 6, 2005

Forty-one percent of the college football teams headed to bowl games this year have failed to meet new academic standards set by the NCAA, according to an annual report released on Monday by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. The report, "APR Rates and Graduation Rates for 2005-06 Bowl-Bound Teams," comes as teams prepare to meet stricter academic requirements that the NCAA recently adopted for college athletes. Under a new measurement called the Academic Progress Rate, or APR, teams score points based on how well their athletes do in the classroom and whether players are making progress toward their degrees.

Twenty-three of the 56 bowl teams are failing to meet the new academic-progress standards, the report found. This year marks the first time the Central Florida institute has used APR data to measure the academic status of bowl teams. In the past, it used only graduation-rate data. The report notes that almost half of this season's bowl teams have failed to graduate 50 percent of their players within six years. According to the report, Northwestern University and Boston College scored the best of any bowl teams. Both teams graduated almost 80 percent of their players. All the bowl-bound teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big East Conference met the NCAA's academic standards. But all five bowl teams from the Pacific 10 Conference, including the No. 1-ranked University of Southern California, did not.

Starting next fall, the NCAA can penalize colleges whose teams do not meet the new standards by cutting back the number of athletic scholarships they are allowed to offer.

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