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Embargoed Until

1:30 P.M. Eastern Thursday, August 5, 2010

Contact(s)

Erik Christianson
NCAA
Director of Public and Media Relations
echristianson@ncaa.org
317/917-6117

INDIANAPOLIS—Marking another milestone in its academic reform efforts, the NCAA today released single-year Academic Progress Rates for Division I head coaches in six sports, including football and basketball.

Created by the Committee on Academic Performance at the behest of the Division I Board of Directors, the database is designed to create more transparency in the Academic Performance Program and strengthen the accountability of coaches for the academic performance of their student-athletes. The Head Coach APR Portfolio this year includes baseball, football, men’s and women’s basketball, and women’s indoor and outdoor track and field. It does not assess additional penalties for a team or coach.

NCAA Interim President Jim Isch said the new Head Coach APR Portfolio is not meant to single out coaches but instead highlight the critical role they play in the development of their student-athletes athletically and academically.

“The vast majority of coaches are doing very well, and they take their roles as educators very seriously,” Isch said.

Committee on Academic Performance chair Walter Harrison, president at the University of Hartford, said the Head Coach APR Portfolio is necessary because coaches are the primary influencers of their student-athletes.

“They already are held accountable for success on the field or court. These rates extend that transparency and accountability to the classroom, as well,” he said. “The perception is that head coaches don’t care about academics. That isn’t true. I know from my work with the NCAA baseball and men’s basketball academic working groups that head coaches deeply understand the importance of academics.”

Harrison acknowledged that many different people on campus – most notably the student-athletes themselves – influence academic performance. However, the coaches not only recruit the student-athletes to their institutions but also have the closest relationship with individual student-athletes of any other adult at a college or university.

Reaction from coaching communities

The development of the Head Coach APR Portfolio did not occur without debate. Some coaches have questioned whether they should be publicly accountable for the academic performance of student-athletes, particularly when other administrators have a hand in creating an overall culture on a campus.

Butler University men’s basketball coach Brad Stevens said he understands some of those feelings, but he believes that nurturing academic success begins before a student-athlete enters a university’s program and continues throughout his career with a school.

“We recruit ambitious guys who are committed to not only earning a degree but also competing in the classroom. We emphasize the fact that you’re here to be a student first,” he said. “There’s a direct correlation between being an active learner in the classroom and being an active participant and ultimately successful on the floor.”

University of Connecticut football coach Randy Edsall also believes it takes more than a head coach to underscore the importance of academics, but he considers shepherding his players toward a degree as part of his job.

“Such a small percentage of young men continue their football career after college. Even if they are fortunate enough to go on to the next level, the length of a football player’s career after college is short, relatively speaking,” Edsall said. “The No. 1 thing a young man needs to do when he goes away to school to participate in football or any other sport is to make sure he gets his degree.”

Grant Teaff, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, and Jim Haney, executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, said coaches count academic performance among their job responsibilities.

“Frankly, coaches know they are responsible and accept public accountability for academics as well as for the conduct of their players and their wins and losses,” Teaff said.

Haney said the accountability is not a new concept.

“The head coach APR portfolio makes that more public,” Haney said. “My hope is that as we bring greater focus on the coach, and that we don’t lose sight of the fact that this is much broader than the coach. There is a team effort involved in creating the success of student-athletes.”

In the past, some coaching associations and other groups (including the Football Academic Working Group) have considered expanding the portfolio to include other people, such as athletics directors and presidents, as Haney suggested. While the Committee on Academic Performance and the Board of Director acknowledged that sentiment, neither group has committed to such an expansion. The CAP has pledged to review both the information published in the portfolio and the individuals listed in the database, but the committee emphasized that publishing coaches’ information in all sports is the group’s first priority.

Background on database

The Head Coach APR Portfolio includes the single-year team APR for head coaches at each institution he or she has been a head coach, along with the average single-year APR in the specific sport for comparison purposes. Interim head coaches are not included in the database.

Hiring and separation dates for each institution at which a person held a head coaching position are also included on each coach’s page, and years in which a coaching change occurred are indicated in each individual report.

Any head coach who is in place at any point during an academic year (August 1-July 31) is assigned that team’s APR for that year. For example, if a coach left a program six weeks into an academic year, the APR for that team for that year is still noted on his or her report, and it also appears on the report of the coach that was hired as a replacement. However, any such “transitional” years are clearly noted on the coach’s page.

Other information, including penalty benchmarks and a link to more information about penalties, is available. Data extend to 2003-04, the first year APR data was collected.  The database is searchable by the coach’s name, sport, institution or year.

The six sports for which data are available were chosen based on the national APR profile for that sport, the opportunity to test technical issues within the system and a diverse mix of large and small teams, as well as team and individual sports (see the accompanying chart for most recent single-year APRs for each of the six sports included in this article). The system will be expanded to all Division I sports after the 2010-11 academic year.

Coaches were provided the opportunity to review their employment dates but do not have the ability to appeal APR information included on the site. Appeals must be filed by an institution through the regular Academic Performance Program process.