In the college game, the goals that matter
NEW ENGLAND is not a regional hotbed for big-time college football, but of the 64 bowl teams, they score when it counts. In my 12th annual Graduation Gap Bowl, Boston College is No. 2 and Connecticut is No. 7.
BC has a graduation success rate of 93 percent, second only to Navy's 95 percent. UConn's 78 percent graduation rate includes the fourth-best black player graduation rate of 85 percent.
These are remarkable achievements in a sport in which student athletes - and especially black student athletes - often feel more pressure to play than to pass their courses. Especially when head coaches now make an average of $1 million, and not for graduating players.
BC and UConn are among 22 teams that score a "touchdown" in the Gap Bowl for having graduation rates of at least 50 percent for both black and white players and racial gaps of less than 15 percentage points.
The worst graduation gap, a 53-percentage-point difference between white and black players, belonged to Arkansas. If graduation rates and gaps were the criteria, four of the five Bowl Championship Series games, each worth $17 million per team, would not be played. The Sugar Bowl has Georgia and Hawaii, with respectively the worst and seventh-worst black player graduation rates of 29 percent and 38 percent. The Fiesta Bowl has Oklahoma, tied for the eighth-worst black graduation rate of 40 percent.
Ohio State and Louisiana State will play for the national title. Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said of his team, "I think our guys have done a lot. They worked hard. They've played tough football games, had a brutal road schedule."
What about a brutal class schedule? Not for black players. Ohio State has a 43 percent black player graduation rate - 31 percentage points behind white players. And this is an improvement! Last year, the black graduation rate was 32 percent, with a racial gap of 53 percentage points.
LSU coach Les Miles said, "I just feel like this football team, like any team that has achieved, has come together, overcome adversity, and played extremely well. . . . That shows you the type of character, the type of man on this team."
LSU's black player graduation rate is 42 percent, 28 percentage points behind the white players. This, too, was an improvement. Last year the black graduation rate was 37 percent with a racial gap of 36 percentage points. No wonder Miles, who just signed a $3 million-a-year contract, said nothing about the type of student on the team.
Here are the calls by the head referee of the Graduation Gap Bowl:
