Academic Disgraces

Yesterday, the NCAA came out with Academic Progress Rate, which will be used in the future to take scholarships away from programs that do a poor job graduating players, or keeping them academically eligible. 51% of Division I schools nationally had at least one failure, registering lower than a 925 on the 1000 point scale, and the top offenders were I-A football teams. So New England, with our aversion to I-A football and our great bastions of academic integrity killed right? Actually, we got MURDERED, with 75% of our 20 D-I schools having at least one program failing. The "Dis-Honor Roll" reads as follows:

FAILED
Boston College Men's Golf 923
Boston College Men's Soccer 917
Boston University Men's Basketball 917
Brown Men's Fencing 875
Central Connecticut State Men's Baseball 797*
Central Connecticut State Men's Basketball 825*
Central Connecticut State Men's Cross Country 875
Central Connecticut State Men's Golf 750*
Central Connecticut State Men's Soccer 900
Central Connecticut State Women's Cross Country 909
Central Connecticut State Women's Volleyball 904
Connecticut Men's Basketball 852*
Connecticut Men's Outdoor Track 898
Connecticut Women's Basketball 904
Connecticut Women's Soccer 923
Hartford Men's Golf 864
Hartford Women's Soccer 880
Maine Men's Baseball 907
New Hampshire Men's Basketball 913
New Hampshire Women's Ice Hockey 921
New Hampshire Women's Tennis 857
Northeastern Men's Basketball 846*
Massachusetts Men's Basketball 886
Massachusetts Men's Football 878*
Massachusetts Men's Outdoor Track 875*
Providence Men's Lacrosse 875
Providence Women's Swimming 812*
Quinnipiac Men's Golf 889
Quinnipiac Men's Lacrosse 922
Rhode Island Men's Soccer 905
Rhode Island Women's Softball 914
Sacred Heart Men's Soccer 920
Sacred Heart Women's Swimming 917
Vermont Men's Ice Hockey 900
Vermont Men's Swimming 900
Vermont Women's Skiing 917
Vermont Women's Tennis 923

Since penalties will be assessed on a multi-year average, only the asterisked teams would lose scholarships immediately if this was applied retroactively. Still, it's a frightening list.

The overall institutional scores are as follows, in decending order, with a bonus note for our five schools that saw all of their teams "make the grade":

Yale 999 No fails
Harvard 990 No fails
Holy Cross 987 No fails
Fairfield 982 No fails
Boston College 979
Boston University 973
New Hampshire 972
Brown 971
Quinnipiac 968
Sacred Heart 968
Dartmouth 966 No fails
Providence 965
Northeastern 961
Vermont 959
Maine 958
Connecticut 956
Rhode Island 954
Hartford 953
Massachusetts 938
Central Connecticut State 916

That's right, CCSU fails as a DEPARTMENT, and it wasn't even close. Yale, on the other hand, did almost suspiciously well. Sure, they're Yale and all, but only two teams in their department got less than perfect scores, football at 995 and men's ice hockey at 991. For comparison, grade-inflation-happy Harvard averaged a 990. I just simply don't buy what Yale is trying to sell.

On a better note, all four of New England's programs "playing up" in a single sport, men's ice hockey in all four cases, made the grade:

American International 1000
Bentley 1000
Massachusetts-Lowell 979
Merrimack 978

At least when schools put all their focus on one sport, they do it right both on and off the playing field.