Graduation rate bragging rights? Hardly

NCAA PRESIDENT Myles Brand brags that the 77 percent graduation rate of all major college athletes will soon be 80 percent. He would get there faster if he bans basketball teams from the NCAA tournament that have 80-percent graduation gaps.

In my annual look at the academic performance of college teams, Nevada, Tennessee, Arizona, and Kentucky will play with black player Graduation Success Rates 92 to 83 percentage points lower than for its white players. Wisconsin, Memphis, UCLA, Texas, Texas Tech, top-ranked Ohio State, Creighton and North Texas all have gaps of 60 to 70 points. Fourteen of the AP's Top 25 men's teams are in the Bottom 26 of tournament black graduation rates.

Despite great graduation rates from Top 25 teams Florida, Notre Dame and Butler, 21 teams in the Top 25 have such lower graduation rates for black players than white players that their average gap was a horrific 46 percentage points. That is nearly double the national average racial gap in Division 1 basketball.

Those gaps account for the women's annual rout of the men in overall tournament graduation rates, 82 percent to 61 percent. White men are only 5 percentage points behind white women. Black men are 22 percentage points behind black women.

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.