NCAA’s
new Academic Progress Rating cutline disparately
impacts HBCUs
This past Thursday, after a retreat of member
university presidents, NCAA president Mark Emmert
announced that teams will be required to average a
930 Academic Progress Rating (APR), calculated over
a four year rolling basis, to be eligible for the
NCAA post season. Aside from the fact that this is
the most significant legislation that the NCAA has
passed in recent memory, and the first to address
growing concern amongst a lack of academic focus in
intercollegiate athletics, the legislation will have
significant implications for teams vying for
postseason participation.
If the legislation was in effect during the 2010-11
season, 12 teams would have been banned from
participating in the 2011 NCAA Tournament, including
the likes of Purdue, USC, Ohio State, Syracuse and
Kansas State. Considering that the majority of the
NCAA’s billion dollar operating budget stems from
its television rights agreement with CBS to
broadcast the tournament, and one cannot deny that
the NCAA has effectively “put its money where its
mouth is” by potentially banning such high profile
teams from participating in the postseason.
Additionally, most outside the coaching profession
have applauded the NCAA for finally making academics
a top priority. In the past, U.S. Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan had advocated that the NCAA
ban teams form participation if their graduation
rates fell below 40%. After the new cutline
resolution was passed, Arne issued a statement
“Applauding the NCAA’s decision and encouraging them
to proceed with due speed… many experts were
skeptical that the NCAA would ever move to deal with
the problem of low graduation rates… they were
wrong. College presidents have acted courageously
and are leading the way.”
Although college president’s will revel in the
spotlight of their progressive thinking and suddenly
decisive action after years of inattentiveness, when
looking over the data and its implications, one
cannot help but ponder that the NCAA may have either
unintentionally burdened a select group of schools
more so than others, or more likely (and far more
alarming), found a convenient way to eliminate
programs that have added little value to the NCAA
tournament.
In calculating the eligibility of teams under the
new 930 APR standard, and using the available APR
data the NCAA provides for the last six years, one
comes to a startling discovery – the Mid-Eastern
Athletic Conference (MEAC) would not have had a
single team eligible for the last 3 NCAA
tournaments, and the Southwestern Athletic
Conference (SWAC) would have had 1 team out of 10
eligible during the same period! In fact, from a
statistical perspective, with 10 teams over 3 years,
the SWAC had a measly 13% chance of placing an APR
eligible team in the tournament, while the MEAC with
11 teams had a definitive 0% chance of placing an
eligible team in the postseason!
|
SWAC |
2011 |
2010 |
2009 |
|
Alabama A&M |
922.75 |
927 |
929.25 |
|
Alabama State |
905 |
914.5 |
923.75 |
|
Alcorn State |
940.75 |
944.25 |
946.25 |
|
Ark – Pine Bluff |
910 |
915.25 |
922.5 |
|
Grambling State |
895.5 |
915 |
928. 75 |
|
Texas Southern |
863 |
856.25 |
836.75 |
|
Miss. Valley State |
913.25 |
928.25 |
948 |
|
Jacksonville State |
854 |
858.25 |
858.25 |
|
Prairie View A&M |
884.5 |
871 |
876 |
|
Southern University |
844.5 |
836.5 |
838.75 |
|
MEAC |
2011 |
2010 |
2009 |
|
Delaware State |
897.75 |
898.75 |
904.75 |
|
Bethune-Cookman |
910 |
919.25 |
925.25 |
|
Coppin State |
885.4 |
906 |
910.25 |
|
Florida A&M |
905 |
905.25 |
890.5 |
|
Hampton |
929 |
894.25 |
864 |
|
Howard |
896 |
888.5 |
903.25 |
|
Morgan State |
893 |
902.25 |
928.25 |
|
Norfolk State |
892.75 |
895.5 |
898.75 |
|
North Carolina A&T |
924.75 |
917 |
916.25 |
|
South Carolina St. |
902.5 |
886.5 |
916.25 |
|
Maryland E.S. |
837.75 |
832.75 |
814.25 |
The MEAC and the SWAC are the only two conferences in
NCAA Division I that are composed entirely of
Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs).
Factually, neither conference has ever placed more than
one team in the history of the modern NCAA tournament,
and moreover, the SWAC holds an overall record of 5-31
(.138), while the MEAC a 3-33 (.083) record in
tournament play. In terms of Ranking Percentage Index (RPI),
which is used to calculate the strength of a team or
conference participating in college basketball, the SWAC
and the MEAC have been ranked no higher than 26 out of
31 conferences over the last 14 seasons, of which over
half they came in dead last.
It is not far-reaching to surmise that from a
competitive standpoint, the MEAC and SWAC and HBCU’s
overall have added very little to the NCAA tournament
during the last few decades. The regular season is not
much different, as the majority of the teams in these
two conferences play most of their non-conference games
on the road, or what is called a “guarantee game”, in
which a larger school pays the visiting school between
$50-$100,000 to provide the payee with a guaranteed win.
Last year, the SWAC compiled a meager 8-104 (.071)
overall record against Division I non-conference
opponents!
It is also important to remember that as part of its
deal with CBS, the NCAA splits a part of its revenue
with the teams and/or conferences that participate in
the NCAA tournament on a per-team/per-win basis. This
past spring, the SWAC and MEAC were paid a combined $3.1
million for their participation (and subsequent loss) in
the men’s basketball tournament. Considering that the
2011 tournament was the first year in which the field
was expanded in order allow larger school to earn more
at-large bids, it is not difficult to see that by
raising the APR standards, and the NCAA essentially
eliminates the bids that would otherwise go to the HBCU
conferences, and opens their respective slots up to
larger at-large teams that will be more competitive, and
more importantly drive more viewership and thus more
revenue to the tournament.
Of course, because the new APR cutline will not be
implemented for 3-5 years, if the MEAC and SWAC have not
achieved the required 930 average by the date the
cutline goes into effect, the NCAA will argue that the
conferences had ample opportunity to increase its
academic performance during the allotted buffer period.
Nevertheless, considering the fact that all but 1 of the
21 schools in the conference were ineligible over the
last 3 years for the tournament according to the new
guidelines, coupled with the fact that the athletic
departments within the two conferences operate at a
budget which ranks them in the bottom 10% percentile of
the 350+ Division I institutions currently eligible for
the tournament, and no one, including the NCAA, can
reasonably expect these schools to be able to comply
with the new regulation anytime soon.
Thus, in implementing the new APR standards, there is a
clear disparate impact on these two conferences as
compared to the others. We are, of course, not alleging
in any way that the NCAA’s actions are racially
motivated, but rather that the new regulations may be a
convenient, facially neutral way, to push certain
schools out of the ranks of Division I. Without the
opportunity to participate in the NCAA tournament, the
teams in the SWAC and MEAC will lose much needed
exposure, as well as their share of the television
revenues, which will essentially become the proverbial
“straw that broke the camel’s back” in eliminating any
viable opportunity for them to participate in
intercollegiate athletics at the highest level.
Since both conferences have several years before the
cutline is implemented, and because it is theoretically
possible that they may somehow manage to do something
that they have never done in the past, and collectively
raise their APR scores to the required level, the
concerns voiced in this article my in fact be moot. That
being said, the evidence, unfortunately, points to a
foreboding outcome for these two conferences, especially
if the NCAA is in fact aware of the “coincidental”
implications of their new rule.
Jason Belzer is a senior writer for collegeinsider.com.
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