The NCAA has just released the latest Academic Progress Rate data. For the first time, the entire UC Davis program has been included. The news is generally good. Five teams received perfect scores and the vast majority were well above the cutoff point. Five UC Davis sports failed to make the grade: women's indoor track (920), Men's golf (913), wrestling (907), men's soccer (894) and softball (841).
What do those numbers mean? The APR is the centerpiece of the NCAA's attempt at academic reform. It was designed as a real-time measure of an individual team's academic performance. A team receives one point for every athlete that remains eligible and another for every athlete that remains in school. Each athlete can score two points. After the data is gathered, calculations are done, and the result is expressed out of a possible 1000. According to the NCAA, the number 925 is considered passing and equates to about a 60-percent graduation rate. Programs that continally fail to make the grade are docked scholarships and could, eventually, be banned from postseason competitions. So failing is kind of a big deal.
Wrestling and gymnastics have been Division I for years and were included in the intial data release last year. UCD Wrestling has seen an improvement from 826 two years ago to 907 now. It will avoid penalties this year. The other sports won't be punished because there is only one year of calculations, but it's clear there is some work to do.
Among the most-watched sports: Football scored a 925, men's basketball earned a 962, women's basketball was at 982. Baseball came out at 946, a good number given the major concerns expressed this offseason about the sport's poor numbers overall.
We'll have a full story in Thursday's Enterprise.
UPDATE (1:11): Edits made to correct wrestling history and men's basketball score.
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