HBCUs work to improve NCAA academic guideline scores

When Donovan Rose took over as Hampton University's football coach in 2009, he aimed to restore the program to its place atop the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and into the national postseason discussion.

Rose quickly learned that he had an equally daunting task: keeping the Pirates compliant with NCAA measures that tracked athletes' academic eligibility and retention.

After four years of fits and starts, of penalties that included scholarship reductions, reduced practice time and postseason ineligibility, Rose believes that he finally has a handle on the team's classroom commitment.

?I had to clean up, literally,? Rose said. ?I had to get rid of a lot of players and some coaches. I had to be smart. I had to hire coaches not just with an impressive r?sum?. I had to hire coaches who were going to be loyal, guys I could trust who felt like they had a vested interest in the program. The players see that. They see coaches who care about them. When I first started, we had coaches who said, ?I'm not going to baby-sit these kids.' I said, ?Yes you are.' Because they need us.?

Hampton football is back in the NCAA's good graces and eligible for postseason, due to a one-year improvement that moved the program above the penalty threshold. But Rose knows that he and the school must remain vigilant.

Despite steady progress overall on the APR front, Historically Black Colleges and Universities score consistently lower and are disproportionately penalized. Seventy-eight percent of Division I teams that scored below 900 on the APR, the cutoff for postseason eligibility, were from HBCUs, in the most recent data released earlier this summer.

Four of the 10 men's basketball teams in the Southwestern Athletic Conference are ineligible for the 2014 NCAA tournament due to poor performances. Waiver requests are pending.

?It's been stated over and over and over that one of the major reasons HBCUs are having a difficult time with the APR is the lack of funding,? Norfolk State athletic director Marty Miller said. ?Many of the institutions just don't have the resources needed to provide all of the academic support and other expenses that are required to stay on top of these students, academically.

?You need a certain number of academic coordinators, tutors,? Miller said. ?You need the appropriate type of study-hall environment. That's been cited over and over, that's the primary reason that most of them don't have the resources to be able to do all that's necessary. You run into difficulties, because if you don't have the appropriate staff, things can fall through the cracks.?

Norfolk State's men's and women's track teams and women's volleyball squad were penalized for the coming school year because of poor APR scores. The men's indoor team scored 866 and the outdoor team scored 867, resulting in postseason bans and reduction in practice time. The women's teams have reduced practice time after the indoor track team scored 876 and the outdoor track team 873. It was the first time either team had drawn penalties.

Miller cited a couple of factors for the teams' penalties: Several athletes left the program, causing the teams to lose points; the graduation rate fell below 50 percent. Had the graduation rate been above 50 percent, even with a low APR score, the Spartans would have avoided the penalty.

?It doesn't take a large number of individuals to leave your program or not be eligible, and that adds up very quickly,? Miller said. ?Overall, our graduation rates have continued to climb in athletics. That's a reflection of the purpose of the APR, to get more students to graduate, and that's what we've been doing. It just so happens that the track numbers were poor last time.?

The APR is one of the NCAA's more arcane statistics, designed to measure both retention and eligibility. A perfect score is 1,000 ? all scholarship athletes remain in school, all are eligible ? and most athletic teams fall somewhere between 900 and 1,000. A score of 925 equates to roughly a 50-percent graduation rate.

Under the NCAA formula, every athlete receiving scholarship aid gets one point for staying in school and one point for remaining eligible. Here's a sample APR calculation: Say a Football Championship Subdivision program has the maximum 63 players on scholarship. Fifty-eight players stay in school and are eligible. Two stay in school, but are academically ineligible. Three drop out, ineligible. That's 118 total points out of the maximum of 126. Divide 118 by 126 and multiply by 1,000. The team's score is 936.

Scores are calculated on one-, two-, and four-year averages. The NCAA will require increased scores in the coming years in order for teams to be eligible for postseason: a 900 four-year average or a 930 two-year average in 2013 and '14. In 2015, teams must earn a 930 four-year APR or a 940 two-year average.

?I think that we're moving in the right direction, and that's based on the overall numbers for our institutions,? MEAC commissioner Dennis Thomas said. ?There's been a commitment on the part of presidents and chancellors to activate a comprehensive program to continue to improve our APR and graduation rates.?

Thomas, who has served on numerous NCAA committees through the years, including as chair of the powerful Committee on Infractions, says that the governing body is sensitive to the challenges faced by HBCUs and other Division I programs with small budgets.

He pointed out that the NCAA has set aside money to provide funds for lower-resource programs struggling with APR compliance. Coppin State received approximately $900,000 over a three-year period, he said, while Norfolk State received $330,000 for academic support units.

The NCAA also routinely grants waivers and exceptions for HBCUs and other lower-resource programs if it appears that they're making progress academically in measures beyond the APR.

Source: http://www.dailypress.com/sports/dp-spt-apr-hampton-nsu-hbcu-20130803,0,7804634.story?track=rss

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