NCAA cracking down on academics

The National Collegiate Athletic Association announced yesterday that half of Division I institutions have at least one team that is not meeting new standards for athletes' academic performance. If their teams' academic records do not improve, those schools face the loss of athletic scholarships starting next year and stiffer penalties in the future.

Overall, 7.2 percent of the 5,720 men's and women's teams in Division I failed to meet the new threshold, a ranking called the Academic Progress Rate, or APR, that is meant to translate into a projected graduation rate of 50 percent.

NCAA officials have said their goal is a ''sea change" in college sports, forcing high-powered athletic departments to do something about often-abysmal graduation rates among college athletes.

''Those institutions that have not been dedicated to graduating their student-athletes know they now are in some considerable jeopardy because of having taken that approach," Robert Hemenway, chancellor of the University of Kansas and chairman of the Division I board of directors, said in a statement released by the NCAA. ''I can't think of a better way . . . to signal that the integration of athletics and academics is indeed the policy for intercollegiate athletics moving forward."

Locally, the men's outdoor track and football programs at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst fell below the benchmark, as did the men's basketball program at Northeastern University. Also flagged was the defending national champion University of Connecticut men's basketball team.

The men's basketball teams at Boston University and UMass-Amherst also came in slightly below the threshold, but they weren't flagged by the NCAA, which is applying an adjustment similar to the concept of a margin of error used in polling, to prevent statistical anomalies for teams with fewer athletes.

The toughened academic standards for college athletes were announced in April by NCAA officials aiming to improve both the academic eligibility and retention of athletes. Division I is the top level of college sports sanctioned by the NCAA, and schools are certified to compete based on a formula that weighs the number of varsity men's and women's sports they compete in, the average attendance at events, and scholarships awarded.

The 2003-2004 data were compiled only to give schools an indication of how they are performing; the NCAA plans to begin withholding scholarships from underperforming teams beginning next year.

Teams, for example, face a loss of a maximum of two scholarships in men's and women's basketball and nine in football for Division I schools, which are allowed a maximum of 85 scholarships in football. While scholarships are funded by individual institutions, the NCAA regulates the number of athletic scholarships they are allowed to award. Removing scholarships could jeopardize how many players a school can recruit and the quality of the team.

In the past, athletes who did not meet academic standards would be ruled ineligible to compete, a sanction that would still apply, but there was no system to punish a school for poor academic performance. Stiffer penalties for consistently poor academic performance, including team bans from postseason competition, could be enforced by the fall of 2008.

Under the new standards, teams are given credit for athletes enrolled full time and academically eligible for both semesters of a school year. Each student athlete can earn two points per semester, one for being academically eligible during the season and one for returning to classes for the following semester. A team's overall score is calculated by dividing the number of points its players earn by the highest number that they could have earned, and that percentage is assessed a point total by multiplying by 1,000.

For example, a 12-person basketball squad that has two players leave in the first semester would receive only 40 out of 48 possible points, earning a score of 833 for the year. Schools scoring below 925, or 92.5 percent, could face penalties. The scores will be calculated next year based on the two available years of data; ultimately each year's score will be based on four years of data.

Some of the athletic directors whose teams were flagged said they were confident they would not face sanction. The athletic director at UMass-Amherst, John McCutcheon, said that a coaching change in football may have created some instability on that team and the few scholarships offered in track may have led students to transfer, but that the teams' academic records are solid.

McCutcheon said UMass would ''make sure we're making progress" with academic support and advising for athletes, but wasn't planning any big changes.

''I think every institution needs to be diligent," he said. ''If we bring young people to this campus, we want to make it a great experience for them academically and athletically. Our first priority is their education."

Northeastern University spokesman Fred McGrail said the basketball team's score was a concern, but noted that 17 of the school's 18 teams met the standards and that Northeastern's overall score was higher than the average. Some schools also contended that their scores were wrong. Charles Brown, Maryland-Baltimore County athletic director, said the NCAA miscalculated the score for its men's track team, which scored 600. Brown said the NCAA calculation included only three indoor track athletes -- not the 27 that participate in both indoor and outdoor track. ''It's very embarrassing and it hurts our recruiting," Brown said.

Corrections to the scores are to be announced in April. The NCAA also will institute a waiver process to avoid penalties. Schools will be notified by December of the final results, which will include figures from the 2004-05 school year.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.