How Colleges Fail Black Football Players

At least half of black football players on the top-10 teams won’t graduate within six years of enrolling.

ATLANTA, Georgia (Dec. 11, 2013)  -- As the nation’s top college football teams prepare to take the field for the elite bowl games, three new reports out this week raise similarly troubling concerns about dismal graduation rates for many of the black players constituting the bulk of the starting lineups.

While the formulas used in the three reports vary to some degree, the pictures painted are not dramatically different. First up: the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Race and Equity’s report on football teams participating in the 2014 Bowl Championship Series.  Based on completion rates across four cohorts (rather than focusing on a single year) at least half of the black football players won’t graduate within six years of enrolling, the report concluded. That’s compared in the report with "a graduation rate of 67 percent for student-athletes overall in the seven major NCAA Division I sports conferences."

Take a look at the infographic for the 10 teams playing in the elite bowl games and national championship:

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