NCAA APR question for a story

I'm sifting through the school I cover's performance in the Academic Progress Rate numbers that were released today by the NCAA. One team finished with a 903 below the 925 score needed to avoid penalties.

But that team isn't listed on the NCAA's list of schools that are penalized. So what does this mean? Are they penalized? On double-secret probation?

Thanks

 

Teams get the scores well in advance and they may have put together a plan about how they are determined to take concrete steps to improve performance (and perhaps showed that grades this year were up) that satisfied the NCAA and kept them off the hook for this year.

 

Might also be a one-year blip and they've done well the previous four years. (But if it's Arizona that's not the case).

 

Teams scoring under 925 are only penalized if they have a so-called "0-for-2 player." That is, if a player departs the program while ineligible, the team cannot replace that scholarship.

 

It's not that simple. Here are the most common escape clauses:
1 Denotes APR that does not subject the team to a contemporaneous penalty because the team is performing better than the institution's general student body, or based on institutional, athletics and student resources.
2 Denotes APR that does not subject the team to contemporaneous penalties due to the squad-size adjustment. The "upper confidence boundary" of a team's APR must be below 925 for that team to be subject to
contemporaneous penalties. Squad-size adjustment does not apply to teams with four years of APR data and a multiyear cohort of 30 or more student-athletes.
3 Denotes APR that does not subject the team to historical penalties due to the team's demonstrated

 

I think No. 2 no longer applies this year (in virtually all sports) because they have four years of data to work with. Also, No. 3 describes describes historical penalties, which is another category. In any case, none of the three negate my original point.

The quick-and-easy version is this: You can face contemporaneous penalties if you're under 925, historical penalties if you're under 900.

Contemporaneous penalties only manifest themselves if an academically ineligible player leaves the program. (He goes 0-for-2, you can't replace his scholarship).

Historical penalties can include other stuff, like loss of practice time. But the first year of historical penalties is only a warning.

Even after the first year, the NCAA can (and does) grant waivers if the school presents a compelling case or offers an academic improvement plan to deal with the problem.

 

I have been dealing with the APR for four years now and the only thing I am sure about is that the NCAA has no idea what direction they want to go with these numbers.

When the APR first came out, there were very few exceptions. Then North Carolina lost a couple of guys to the NBA early and the NCAA permitted an exception for players who turned pro because, "Hey, we can't punish North Carolina. They are North Carolina."

The compliance person at my school put the APR numbers together two years ago. When going over the list of exceptions, we had a bunch of points taken away for things that shouldn't have hurt us. Later in the spring, the compliance person went to an APR seminar and found that every point we lost (that we didn't think we should have) was going to be given back because the NCAA had changed the ruling that had hurt us.

 

Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.

 

And when they know what direction they want to go, a big-money school or conference steps in and says, "I don't think so."

 

I've been covering this APR mess for 2-3 years now, and based on my knowledge, pompano is dead on.

 

Anyone got a score lower than 800?

Hell, can anyone even come close to that?