Recruiting - NCAA is keeping score

[MeanGreen61]

Posted by Space Raider on the Sun Belt Delphi board.

RECRUITING

NCAA is keeping score

Colleges face a tougher measuring stick in regard to their admission decisions

Alan Schmadtke

Sentinel Staff Writer

January 15, 2006

It was a time-honored tradition, an offseason coaching version of one-upmanship.

The game, unnamed by its participants, was, "How Low Can You Go?"

"You'd go to the convention and hear guys say, 'This kid's got no chance to qualify, but we'll get him in,' " Clemson assistant Brad Scott said. "Then you'd hear the next guy tell about the guys they were going to take."

Every year such scenes were repeated constantly behind closed doors after National Signing Day. College coaches would huddle with lists of signees from rival schools, making notes on which academically at-risk players had been signed. Cursing generally followed.

Sentiments were mixtures of disappointment, disbelief and jealousy.

Coaches then would show up at their conference's spring meetings to air grievances about leveling the playing field. Those days are almost over.

"We don't really hear that anymore," Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive said.

A new code -- APR -- is sweeping through college football.

At the NCAA Convention last week, university presidents received updated Academic Progress Rating numbers, the new, penalty-attached measuring stick for how well schools sign, keep and graduate athletes. Presidents are taking this seriously, and making sure everybody in their athletic department and conference is, too.

"There's going to be some peer pressure. This was part of the intent, the scarlet-letter approach," Western Athletic Conference Commissioner Karl Benson said. "Nobody wants to be embarrassed."

No two conferences were created equally and no two schools operate equally. Although the NCAA has its standards, at the end of the day each college's admissions director can say yes or no to whatever recruit he or she wants.

The only judgment needed is whether there's a realistic expectation that the athlete in question can handle that school's coursework and graduate.

"I've been at schools where there's one degree program that's a lot easier than all the rest, and whenever we had a player get in [academic] trouble, we'd put him in that program," said one longtime I-A assistant who asked to remain anonymous. "Some schools don't have programs like that, but a lot of them do. If you have the program and you know kids can get through it, that doesn't give you much heartburn when you recruit a kid who might be at-risk."

Some schools also are private, which means they operate with much less outside scrutiny.

Such judgment calls will provide some of the intrigue on National Signing Day. Some coaches will evaluate the competition with mixed emotions. Others won't look back.

"I'm sure we'll see players we wish we could have taken, but the way I look at it, they're somebody else's problem," UCF Coach George O'Leary said. "Some of those players can help you win, but a lot of times they help you lose."

Getting them in

Since 2005, the NCAA has required athletes take 14 "core" courses in four years of high school to get into a Division I college. That grade-point average in those courses is then placed on a sliding scale of SAT and ACT scores. The higher the GPA, the lower an athlete's test score could be.

The sliding scale was implemented in response to years of criticism that entrance requirements put too much emphasis on standardized test scores, which, critics argue, are racially and culturally biased. The sliding scale is supposed to place more emphasis on academic success in core courses and less on test-taking days.

In 2008, the academic sledding gets tougher. Athletes will have to pass 16 core courses, including an extra year of math.

The days of the partial qualifier -- a student who has a solid GPA but a sub-par test score, or vice versa -- are gone. The NCAA eliminated the middle-ground recruit as it re-engineered standards both for incoming freshmen and ongoing students.

Now recruits are either qualified on the sliding scale or they're not. All final determinations are made by the NCAA's Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse.

Where debate and discussion comes in is when schools decide to admit athletes the Clearinghouse declines to certify. Therein lies the competition.

In the Mid-American Conference, for instance, some Ohio schools assure in-state prep athletes that if they secure a high school degree, admission is all but automatic. But Miami (Ohio) and Ohio U. make no such guarantee.

Schools in other states make similar pledges. Florida schools used to do it, but that was long before the state's population exploded in the 1980s. Now Florida high school graduates are merely assured of a spot in a local junior college.

Schools can enroll academic non-qualifiers, but athletes must pay their own way to school for their freshmen year. Often they do so by receiving financial aid.

Another issue is junior-college recruiting. A minority of schools thrive on it. Others dabble. In many cases, admissions officers are more likely to approve junior-college prospects than high school recruits with troubling transcripts.

"Cal has a reputation of being like Harvard in terms of getting into school," said one Pac-10 assistant who asked not to be identified. "That's probably true for the every-day student. In football, they take a hard look at high school kids, but they're pretty active with the junior colleges. They're not as picky."

Since 2000, the Bears have signed 28 junior-college recruits.

UCF can relate. The Golden Knights have brought in 26 JC transfers since 2001. Even under O'Leary, who raised the academic bar for high school recruits above NCAA standards, UCF has added seven JC transfers. On the other hand, UCF coaches can tick off names of former high school prospects they couldn't touch but other schools in the MAC and Conference USA did.

Likewise, in 2002, Ron Zook's staff at Florida signed coveted middle linebacker Lance Mitchell of City College of San Francisco. But the SEC required a math class Mitchell didn't have, so he instead enrolled at Oklahoma. He started for two seasons with the Sooners and now plays for the Arizona Cardinals.

An ongoing discussion

Although coaches don't spend much time at conference meetings whining about rivals admitting inadmissible recruits, conference leaders make sure academics have a standing place on the agenda. League leaders don't negotiate standards, but they're always around.

When the WAC needed to supplement its roster of schools after a sweeping round of conference realignments in 2003, there wasn't much choice. Almost immediately after Rice, SMU and Tulsa announced they were leaving for a re-formed Conference USA, WAC leaders turned to Utah State and Idaho. Both schools had clamored for WAC membership.

How those schools' academics fit with the remaining WAC schools wasn't much of an issue for two reasons. First, Utah State and Idaho are state schools with like missions of the other WAC schools.

Second, there weren't any other choices among I-A schools.

There was an immediate plus, Benson said. When the new WAC was formed on July 1, 2005, "for the first time in 10 years we have institutions that from an academic standpoint look more similar to one another."

Around the country, conferences have made peace with where they are. Commissioners make few apologies, preferring program's win-loss records, graduation rates and APR numbers to speak for them.

All, however, are wary. The last thing they want is to go to a league meeting and see their presidents engaged in a fraternal game of "How Low Can You Go?"

Edited January 16, 2006 by MeanGreen61

[MeanGreen61]

Posted by SpaceRaider on the Sun Belt Delphi board.

Here's how they rank (Rankings scores 1-10, 10 being toughest, 1 being easiest)

How they rank

January 15, 2006

ATLANTIC COAST

9 Wake Forest

8 Duke

7 Georgia Tech

6 Boston College

6 North Carolina

6 Virginia

4 Maryland

4 Florida State

4 Miami

2 Clemson

2 NC State

2 Virginia Tech

BIG EAST

7 Syracuse

6 Connecticut

6 Pittsburgh

4 Rutgers

2 Cincinnati

2 Louisville

2 USF

2 West Virginia

BIG TEN

9 Northwestern

7 Michigan

7 Penn State

6 Illinois

5 Indiana

5 Iowa

5 Purdue

5 Wisconsin

4 Minnesota

3 Michigan State

3 Ohio State

BIG 12

7 Texas

7 Missouri

5 Colorado

5 Oklahoma

5 Kansas

5 Nebraska

4 Baylor

4 Texas A&M

3 Iowa State

3 Texas Tech

2 Kansas State

2 Oklahoma State

CONFERENCE USA

10 Rice

8 SMU

8 Tulane

5 Tulsa

5 UCF

4 Houston

4 Memphis

3 Southern Miss

2 East Carolina

2 Marshall

2 UAB

2 UTEP

MID-AMERICAN

7 Buffalo

7 Miami (Ohio)

6 Ohio U.

5 Kent State

4 Ball State

3 Northern Illinois

3 Eastern Michigan

3 Central Michigan

3 Western Michigan

2 Akron

2 Bowling Green

2 Toledo

MOUNTAIN WEST

8 Air Force

6 San Diego State

5 TCU

4 Wyoming

3 UNLV

3 BYU

3 Colorado State

3 New Mexico

PACIFIC-10

9 Stanford

8 UCLA

6 Cal

5 Arizona

5 Oregon

5 Washington

3 Arizona State

3 Oregon State

3 Washington State

3 USC

SOUTHEASTERN

9 Vanderbilt

7 Georgia

5 Florida

5 Kentucky

3 Alabama

3 Arkansas

3 Auburn

3 LSU

3 Ole Miss

2 Mississippi State

2 South Carolina

2 Tennessee

SUN BELT

3 Louisiana-Lafayette

3 Louisiana-Monroe

2 Arkansas State

2 Florida Atlantic

2 Florida International

2 North Texas

1 Middle Tennessee

1 Troy

WESTERN ATHLETIC

4 Hawaii

4 Nevada

3 Fresno State

2 Boise State

2 Idaho

2 San Jose State

2 Louisiana Tech

1 New Mexico State

1 Utah State

INDEPENDENTS

9 Army

9 Navy

7 Notre Dame

2 Temple

[untgirl04]

SUN BELT

3 Louisiana-Lafayette

3 Louisiana-Monroe

2 Arkansas State

2 Florida Atlantic

2 Florida International

2 North Texas

1 Middle Tennessee

1 Troy

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Wait.... so ULaLa, ULaMo, and the F_U's are more difficult to get into than North Texas?