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Yeah. Guess what? The NCAA's APR report came out.We're getting penalized FIVE scholarships by the NCAA for not meeting academic requirements.This is bad.Heads should roll. It's not like we have had a whole bunch of players drafted as juniors so that they never graduate.http://web1.ncaa.org/app_data/apr2007/5_2007_apr.pdf The penalty is on page 4.This should send up all kinds of warning flags to the athletic department. It's time to re-invest in the acedemic support system for the student athletes. What we have is apparently inadequate.This may be because of all the academically questionable recruits that JD was bringing in a few years ago, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't put more into the whole support system.

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This isn't a shock to anyone. JD's 2005 and 2006 recruiting classes were terrible, retention-wise. Lee Owens' latter classes were not so hot either.JD's highly-rated 2007 class is pretty much in-tact, and the 2008 class was assembled with academics, character and eligibility equally as important as athletic ability. That wasn't the case in 2005 or 2006. WAY to heavy on athletic talent....If you want to look at it from a glass-half-full point of view, we're down to 80 scholarships. 1-AA schools have 63, and the better ones beat MAC schools with regularity. Losing 5 scholarships sucks, but it isn't a death sentence. We're going to need to take our lumps on this one, and move on. I also heard where we may get a scholarship or two back because we added women's golf? Anyone know if that's true?

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Yeah. Guess what? The NCAA's APR report came out.We're getting penalized FIVE scholarships by the NCAA for not meeting academic requirements.This is bad.Heads should roll. It's not like we have had a whole bunch of players drafted as juniors so that they never graduate.http://web1.ncaa.org/app_data/apr2007/5_2007_apr.pdf The penalty is on page 4.This should send up all kinds of warning flags to the athletic department. It's time to re-invest in the acedemic support system for the student athletes. What we have is apparently inadequate.This may be because of all the academically questionable recruits that JD was bringing in a few years ago, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't put more into the whole support system.
It is an issue, and does need to be addressed. However, looking over the rest of the MAC, Can't, Toledo, Central, Eastern, Buffalo, Temple are all in penalty. And I bet a reference of C-USA and Sun Belt teams will show similar if not worse APR's then Akron. It's because of these teams have to take chances to be competetive. It is also obvious that this program is designed to hurt Mid-Majors who lack the same resources as the BCS schools.However, there should be no excuse, the University needs to focus the football players a little more on academics and provide the needed support to keep these kids in school. We have to prove we are better then the rest of these schools. Miami, NIU and BGSU don't seem to have problems, and they are typically pretty solid programs to boot.
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Does anyone know how transfers factor into this equation? We've had a lot of kids leave the program in recent years and transfer to other schools, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are academic casulties who won't graduate. Also, how do walk-ons play into this? Does the NCAA only look at the retention rate of players on scholarship, or are we penalized if walk-ons allowed into the program aren't retained as well??

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The real question is whether we have five scholarships to give. If not, we may lose some recruits or players.Also, only four MAC teams will be penalized. Akron, Buffalo (loses 2), CMU (loses 2), and Toledo (loses 6). The rest that were under the threshold got some kind of waiver.Also of note, the BCS teams that are under the limit managed to get out of it with some APR Improvement Plan crap.

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Does anyone know how transfers factor into this equation? We've had a lot of kids leave the program in recent years and transfer to other schools, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are academic casulties who won't graduate. Also, how do walk-ons play into this? Does the NCAA only look at the retention rate of players on scholarship, or are we penalized if walk-ons allowed into the program aren't retained as well??
To my knowledge, if a scholarship player transfers, then graduates from another school, the original institution gets the credit. Likewise, if you accept a scholarship player as a transfer, you don't get credit for his/her graduation. Maybe it has changed, but I know it was that way at some point.4-year walk ons don't count. Otherwise, the Zips could put uniforms on a bunch of computer geeks and artificially inflate the team graduation and GPA's.If someone begins as a walk on, then goes on scholarship, I think it counts. But there is fine print to that which I don't know much about.If a walk on departs, it has no effect on the team graduation numbers.
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This should send up all kinds of warning flags to the athletic department. It's time to re-invest in the acedemic support system for the student athletes. What we have is apparently inadequate.
there have been changes, but the reality of the situation is that things don't suddenly change over night. personally, i'm not too worried about the future. yes it sucks now that we have to suck up a penalty, but i have complete confidence that this will not be an issue in the future.
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I'm sorry, but I don't buy the "Support for Student-Athletes is lacking" argument. Bottom line here is that a lot of these "Student Athletes" don't care about the student part of it. Back in my day, when I was paying for my school and shooting, you have no idea how many of these kids were completely blowing off their classes. And it's not like they were taking Engineering or something. If you needed help, you got it. These kids get WAY WAY WAY more help than non-student athletes. They simply need to stop screwing around and study. IMO, JD took some risks to quickly build the program and it looked good early on, but has backfired since then. Now we are paying the price. JD probably thought he would be long gone by now and not have to deal with it. Now that he's gonna be around for a while, he's changed his tune.

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i guess my point is that if you actually get a chance to look at one of the student-athlete handbooks that were given out to all athletes this year, you'll see in there perfectly spelled out the academic demands among other things. this includes things such as the mandatory class attendance and punishments from the department for each infraction. these rules are being enforced! we are just having to pay for previous years before these standards took effect. things are changing and changing for the better. :thumb:

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I'm sorry, but I don't buy the "Support for Student-Athletes is lacking" argument. Bottom line here is that a lot of these "Student Athletes" don't care about the student part of it. Back in my day, when I was paying for my school and shooting, you have no idea how many of these kids were completely blowing off their classes. And it's not like they were taking Engineering or something. If you needed help, you got it. These kids get WAY WAY WAY more help than non-student athletes. They simply need to stop screwing around and study. IMO, JD took some risks to quickly build the program and it looked good early on, but has backfired since then. Now we are paying the price. JD probably thought he would be long gone by now and not have to deal with it. Now that he's gonna be around for a while, he's changed his tune.
AMEN to that!
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IMO, JD took some risks to quickly build the program and it looked good early on, but has backfired since then. Now we are paying the price. JD probably thought he would be long gone by now and not have to deal with it. Now that he's gonna be around for a while, he's changed his tune.
Again, thank goodness for KD. Most coaches are more worried about their next job than doing their current one.
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So wait, let me get this right...Purdue's football team with a score of 920 only loses 2 scholarships if their "APR Improvement Plan" doesn't work,whereas Akron's football team with a score of 920 loses 5 scholarships?
Yep, that's right. Here, I'll clarify for you..Purdue = Big 10 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Akron = MAC -$
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I'm sorry, but I don't buy the "Support for Student-Athletes is lacking" argument. Bottom line here is that a lot of these "Student Athletes" don't care about the student part of it. Back in my day, when I was paying for my school and shooting, you have no idea how many of these kids were completely blowing off their classes. And it's not like they were taking Engineering or something. If you needed help, you got it. These kids get WAY WAY WAY more help than non-student athletes. They simply need to stop screwing around and study. IMO, JD took some risks to quickly build the program and it looked good early on, but has backfired since then. Now we are paying the price. JD probably thought he would be long gone by now and not have to deal with it. Now that he's gonna be around for a while, he's changed his tune.
AMEN to that!
Being the father of a current Zips football player I can tell you that the support system is there....when my son started 2 years ago, the athletic support room was in the JAR and was very small...I don't know if it has changed location because my son's GPA is 3.22 and he is not required to do mandatory attendance in the study room....back when he was a freshman he was required to spend minimum 10 hours a week (checking in with his Zip card) either studying or with a helper...if you were seen sleeping or talking or listening to music you were asked to leave....bottom line is you are correct in your assessment that the problem lies in the academic character of the players recruited...apparently JD has been working on this.....
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This whole mess should be bothering everyone! This is not a racist issue; this is not the NCAA trying to screw mid-majors. This is a break down from the administration all the way to the student athlete. We have an administration letting a coach recruit whomever he wants without applying guidelines that I'm sure have been spelled out. Someone should have been on top of this right from the beginning.I figured something like this might happen when, at last year's Army game, they announced the players with a GPA above 3.0. I can't remember all of them, but it seemed most were Owens recruits. Mackey, Stokes, Hildreth, Flaherty(sp?), and there were only 13 total. I was told our TEAM GPA Just because JD says he is working on the problem (that he created) we won't know for a couple of years how this turns out.

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  • 3 weeks later...
there's a new podcast interview of mack on gozips and he specifically addresses the loss of scholarships among other things. kinda makes me worry about women's basketball now.
What happens with the five that lost their scholarships this year (six in two years) on the women's basketball team? If this does anything to the basketball team like what happened to the football team, with the number of scholarships available to BB, we won't be able to offer a scholarship until 2020. Or am I wrong? :unsure: :unsure: :unsure:
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there's a new podcast interview of mack on gozips and he specifically addresses the loss of scholarships among other things. kinda makes me worry about women's basketball now.
What happens with the five that lost their scholarships this year (six in two years) on the women's basketball team? If this does anything to the basketball team like what happened to the football team, with the number of scholarships available to BB, we won't be able to offer a scholarship until 2020. Or am I wrong? :unsure: :unsure: :unsure:
It depends:http://www2.ncaa.org/portal/academics_and_...reform/faq.html
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