This pretty much sums up the NCAA's efforts to self regulate anything. It's all a facade thrown up to hide the real issues, and make it seem like the NCAA is having some kind of positive effect. They aren't. But as long as the bucks keep rolling, and Congress doesn't take note, nobody really cares...

The Charleston Daily Mail Wrote:NCAA hits sour note trumpeting APR success
By Dave Hickman
Staff writer
May 16, 2009

MORGANTOWN - I just got around to actually reading the glowing press release distributed by the NCAA 10 days ago regarding the latest round of Academic Progress Rating numbers. It's a veritable thesaurus of glowing descriptions of the rise in the numbers during the five years of the program - encouraging, improved, positive, dramatic, you name it.

"After five years of APR application and data collection, there is clear evidence of upward trends in nearly every sport,'' according to NCAA president Myles Brand. Walter Harrison, the chairman of the group's Committee on Academic Performance talks of taking great satisfaction "in the increased academic performance of student-athletes.''

I know I've said this before, but while I'm sure the APR is a good thing and student-athletes actually are being asked - or forced - to take academics more seriously, I'm just as convinced that those upward trends are in large part due to schools learning how the system works and adjusting to it.

For instance, the worst sin a school can commit in regard to the APR is having what the NCAA calls "0-for-2s,'' athletes who leave school ineligible, thus subtracting both an eligibility point and a retention point. West Virginia actually had two sports fall below the pass-fail cutoff of a 925 APR (men's soccer and women's rowing), but lost no scholarship in either sport for next year because neither had any 0-fers.

Let's say School A has an APR of 918 in a sport and School B has an APR of 902. Most of School A's roster is on the Dean's list, but the APR suffered because the coach made a recruiting mistake and brought in a kid who never went to class and then left school. School B's team is made up of marginal students who are in school simply to stay eligible and play and for the most part they did just that, losing a few points here and there for academics. But none of those academic problem kids transferred out.

Guess which team is penalized by loss of scholarships. It's the one whose roster has all the smart, hard-working kids, maybe a couple right on the borderline of eligibility and the one slacker. The team filled with borderline students is in the clear because no one transferred out ineligible.

Again, it's all in learning the play the game and schools are doing just that, concentrating considerable effort on avoiding those 0-for-2s. As for everyone else, just stay eligible and in school and everything will be fine.

Is that real academic reform, a system in which the objective is to avoid worst-case scenarios more than actually improving academics?

Yes, there are other provisions of the APR that address actual improved performance. Perhaps the most significant one is that students must meet certain progress-toward-degree requirements, rather than simply maintaining an adequate grade-point average while taking a class load that will never amount to graduation. Things like that are certainly positives in the APR, so from that standpoint it's hard to complain about the system.

But are those more-stringent academic requirements - and students meeting them, of course - really responsible for the consistent rise in the APR or is it schools so hell bent on avoiding 0-for-2s that that's where they concentrate much of the effort?

The NCAA's own statistics bear it out. The number of 0-for-2s has declined dramatically in recent years. I suppose it's a matter of perspective. The NCAA looks at that stat - as well as the increased APR scores in general - and trumpets it as the system working. I look at it and see schools working the system. By pinpointing efforts on that small group of students who might become 0-for-2s (and it is very small, dropping from 3.6 percent five years ago to 2.6 percent this time around) schools can both avoid scholarship and other more significant penalties and in tandem raise the overall APR scores, which increase significantly without those 0-for-2s.

Perhaps I'm making too much of this. After all, any academic reform is good and there are a lot of provisions in the APR for actually improving things. It's kind of like throwing a dump truck load of mud at a wall and hoping some of it sticks - anything that does is a plus.

But I just don't like to hear the folks at the NCAA trumpet the success of the program based on the numbers improving. Statistics can say anything you want them to say. Trust me, I know. I can take any set of numbers you want to throw out there and make them seem as good or bad as you want. I can play with them and tweak them and usually come up with any result I want.

Where the APR is concerned, I can't help but think the NCAA's member schools are doing the same.

Reach Dave Hickman at 304-348-1734 or dphickman1@aol.com.