NCAA Academic Metric Hits HBCUs

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has banned a record eight teams from postseason play because of their athletes’ poor academic performance -- the most since the academic penalty system was first used two years ago. But, in a sign of the widening gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” in college sport, four of those punished teams are from historically black colleges and universities, and a fifth is from an institution designated by the federal government as predominantly black.

Tuesday, the NCAA released its annual set of Academic Progress Rates -- scores for each Division I sports team based on the academic eligibility and retention of each scholarship athlete. Teams scoring below certain APR thresholds can face penalties ranging from scholarship losses and practice time reductions to postseason bans and, ultimately, suspension of their institution’s NCAA membership. The longer a team scores below a certain threshold, the more severe its penalty. Each teams is judged on the four-year average of its APR. The latest scores are from the 2006-7, 2007-8, 2008-9 and 2009-10 academic years. (A searchable database is available showing complete APR scores and penalties per institution and team.) This year, of the 6,400 teams in Division I, 103 teams from 67 institutions were punished. Sixty teams lost scholarships, 16 received public warnings, 19 lost practice time and 8 have postseason bans.

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