Kentucky QB Levis to enter NFL draft, skip bowl game
Kentucky quarterback Will Levis announced Wednesday on social media he will declare for the NFL draft and skip the Wildcats’ upcoming Music City Bowl against Iowa.
Projected as a first-round selection next spring, Levis, a graduate of Xavier High in Middletown, Conn., completed 65% of his passes for 2,406 yards and 19 touchdowns with 10 interceptions in 11 games for Kentucky (7-5).
The Penn State transfer won 17 games over two seasons at Kentucky. He thanked Wildcat coaches, teammates and fans in his Twitter post and expressed gratitude for helping him find confidence, success and lasting friendships at the university.
“If I have one thing to hold in my heart from my time in Lexington,” Levis said, “it’s that Kentucky has my back and that everything ahead of me wouldn’t be possible without the support and encouragement I received along the way.
“Most importantly, we won some incredibly memorable ball games in my college career.”
The senior Levis was a preseason All-southeastern Conference firstteam selection after passing for 2,826 yards and 24 touchdowns last season. He also rushed for 376 yards and nine touchdowns.
Racial gap closing: The racial gap in graduation rates for this year’s bowl teams in college football has declined again, this time to the smallest difference in the history of a study examining the data.
The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at Central Florida reported Wednesday that the overall Graduation Success Rate (GSR) for bowl-bound teams in 2022 has reached an all-time high of 83%. At the same time, improvements in the average GSR for Black football players (79.5%) slightly outpaced those of white players (91.7%).
Those are all improvements from last year’s study reporting GSRS of 81.3% overall, 78% for Black players and 89.7% for white players. This year’s gap of 11.6 percentage points is the smallest in the history of the study dating to 2004; it was 19 percentage points as recently as 2017.
“As long as there are gaps between any part of how we look at life in America — in this case, education — whether it’s wealth, healthcare, the criminal-justice system, when there’s a disparity between different racial groups, then we have a problem in America,” TIDES director and lead report author Richard Lapchick said. “And we have to deal with it. I think we’re dealing with it better. But we have do it even better.”
The study cited GSR, a methodology developed in 2002 and used by the NCAA to consider athlete transfer patterns that can affect graduation. It examined data for 82 teams in the Bowl Subdivision headed for the postseason, but doesn’t include the Celebration Bowl teams of Jackson State and North Carolina Central playing at the Championship Subdivision level.