Creighton Excels in Latest APR Report from NCAA

On Wednesday, the NCAA announced its latest APR Scores for its member institutions. The APR, or Academic Progress Rate, is a metric established by the NCAA to measure the success or failure of collegiate athletic teams in moving student-athletes towards graduation. A score of 1000 equates to 100% graduation rate, while a 925 equates to 50%. Schools lose points for having academically ineligible players or for having players leave the program without graduating or being eligible to transfer elsewhere. The scores are based upon the past four school years, and those released Wednesday reflect up to the 2008-09 school year.

Any school that falls below the 925 (or 50%) threshold in any four-year period is penalized with loss of scholarships, or in extreme cases, a postseason ban. How exactly is the metric calculated? According to the NCAA:

The APR is calculated by allocating points for eligibility and retention — the two factors that research identifies as the best indicators of graduation. Each player on a given roster earns a maximum of two points per term, one for being academically eligible and one for staying with the institution. A team’s APR is the total points of a team’s roster at a given time divided by the total points possible. Since this results in a decimal number, the CAP decided to multiply it by 1,000 for ease of reference. Thus, a raw APR score of .925 translates into the 925 that will become the standard terminology.

So essentially, as long as you graduate half of your athletes in a four-year period, you pass. That’s a pretty low bar, and frankly, its pathetic that any program would fail under such a lenient grading scale. But every year, it happens, and even big-time BCS schools are not immune from the NCAA’s wrath.

You might have heard about Colorado being penalized in both football and men’s basketball — they were the highest profile school to be penalized, making headlines on ESPN and elsewhere. The Buffaloes will lose four scholarships in football and one in men’s hoops for failing to meet the standards required by the NCAA.

You might have heard about Syracuse losing two scholarships in men’s basketball, as coach Jim Boeheim’s program was hampered by the loss of three players to the NBA early (highlighting a potential problem with the way the metric is calculated).

And you might also have heard about Missouri State, who will lose one scholarship in men’s hoops for failing below the 925 cutoff line, although its hard to know how much of that had to do with the changeover in coaches from Barry Hinson to Cuonzo Martin. In any event, the Bears will have just 12 scholarships to work with for the next year.

You probably didn’t hear about Creighton excelling in the APR scores, however, because negative headlines make the loudest noise. The Jays scored a cumulative score of 977.6, which exceeds the national average of 969 for the same 13 sports (Women’s Crew is not counted in the APR report).

Two of Creighton’s men’s teams, cross country and golf, as well as six women’s teams, cross country, golf, rowing, softball, tennis and volleyball, earned a perfect 1,000 APR score for 2008-2009 — meaning those eight programs graduated 100% of their athletes. You read that right: eight of Creighton’s 13 sports had a perfect graduation rate. That’s remarkable, isn’t it?

Since Men’s Basketball gets the most scrutiny, let’s dive a bit deeper into the numbers. The Jays scored a 960, which is in the 60th percentile nationwide. Perhaps more impressive, it exceeds the average score in EVERY category the NCAA tracks. The D1 average is 940. Public universities averaged a 931, while private universities averaged 958. Football Bowl Subdivision schools (the old D1A) scored an average of 942, Football Championship Subdivision schools (the old D1AA) scored an average of 938, and non-football schools scored an average of 942. Creighton exceeds every one of those averages, some by substantial margins.

Here’s how the rest of the MVC stacks up:

Keep in mind that its the Multi-Year APR that garners the penalties, which is why Indiana State escapes the wrath of the NCAA despite their 2008-09 APR falling below the 925 cutoff.

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Even though a school’s cumulative score doesn’t have a minimum threshold to meet, I thought it might be fun to use the NCAA’s searchable database to get a table of those scores for the entire MVC. The results are interesting.

The MVC, as a whole, is solid academic league by this metric, which is not surprising to anyone I don’t think. It does make it all that much more impressive to see Creighton at the top of the league, however, given how good the league is academically.

When the APR report comes out next summer for the just-completed 2009-10 season, Creighton should be right back up there again, given these impressive facts courtesy of a Creighton press release:

• 101 of 231 student-athletes had a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher for the 2009-10 academic year; 16 student-athletes earned a GPA of 4.0 for the spring semester 2010.
• Creighton has won the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) All-Academic Award in five of the past six seasons.
• During the 2009-10 academic year, 23 individuals were named to MVC scholar-athlete teams.
• Graduating senior and softball pitcher Tara Oltman became the first female student-athlete in Creighton history to be named a three-time Academic All-American.
• The men’s and women’s cross country teams were honored by the U. S. Track & Field and Cross Country Association for their work in the classroom. The men were tied for the highest GPA in the country at 3.67 and the women were tied for 10th nationally with a 3.64 GPA.
• Six Creighton rowers were named 2010 Scholar-Athlete Award winners by the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association.

The APR isn’t a perfect metric, but it does a pretty good job at showing progress — and the mere fact that the NCAA uses it to keep wayward programs in check with real, tangible penalties is a fantastic thing in my opinion, perfect or not.