HAMPTON, Virginia -- Before preseason practice begins, Hampton University's football team knows the playoffs are unreachable. The Pirates are ineligible for the FCS tournament because of failure to meet NCAA Academic Progress Rate requirements, a sanction announced in June.An APR is calculated annually for every Division I sports team. The APR is based on the eligibility and retention of each scholarship recipient. The three FCS schools ineligible for the 2012 playoffs are Hampton, North Carolina A&T, and Texas Southern. Hampton and N.C. A&T belong to the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.
HU returns 17 starters from last season's team, which went 7-4 and lost three games by four or fewer points. Coach Donovan Rose said he told his players, "A lot of this happened before you guys were here. We're going to accept that, and move on, and go forward."
Hampton's fourth-year coach, a former Pirates star player, said the school isn't addressing the APR issue only in a verbal way. The academic profile of the Pirates' incoming class of football recruits represents improvement from previous years, according to Rose. "Out of my 18 freshmen, 14 of them had a 3.0 (grade-point-average) or better," he said.
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