Low APR bans 36 programs from postseason

Indianapolis — The money gap at Division I colleges is continuing to show up on the playing fields and in the classrooms.

Thirty- six teams will be banned from the 2014- 15 postseason because of subpar scores on the newest Academic Progress Rate, which was released Wednesday. Not one of them comes from a power conference. And of the 17 football and men’s basketball teams, eight are from historically black schools. Alabama State and Florida A&M made the list in both sports.

“While the low- resource institutions are overrepresented among the population (postseason bans) we’re talking about today, they’ve made improvement, they’ve made significant improvement as a group,” said Walter Harrison, chairman of the NCAA’s committee on academic performance. “They’re just starting at a lower spot. We’re trying to help them with some advice and some financing.”

The NCAA has awarded approximately $ 4.3 million over the last three years to low- resource schools, defined as those ranking in the bottom 15 percent in funding. The money is intended to help fund extra tutoring or other academic resources that could help keep student- athletes on track to graduate. There has been a payoff. Historically black colleges and low-resource institutions have seen a 15-point improvement in one-year APR scores over the past three years, from 947 to 962, and their four-year average has jumped 23 points, from 930 to 953, in the last three annual reports.

The hardest hit league was the Southwestern Athletic Conference.

Five of the league’s 10 football teams could be banned from the postseason. Alabama State, Arkansas- Pine Bluff, Mississippi Valley State and Prairie View A&M all made the NCAA list. All of Southern University’s athletic teams have been ineligible for postseason play since Dec. 2 because of questions about the school’s APR data. NCAA spokeswoman Michelle Hosick said Southern was not included on the banned list because the school’s teams could still regain their eligibility, pending a review.

The APR is billed as a realtime measurement of academic success. Each player on a team receives one point each semester if they remain academically eligible and another point each semester if they are still enrolled in school. The NCAA says a 930 score correlates to a 50 percent graduation rate. A per- fect score is 1,000.

When broken down, the five power conferences — the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac12 and SEC — have outperformed all other Division I leagues by at least four points in every one- year measurement since 2007- 08. And teams in those five leagues have cut the percentage of teams falling below the 930 cutline that trigger penalties from 6 percent to 3 percent over the last two years. The percentage of teams in all other conferences, meanwhile, stands at 8 percent. Two years ago, the non-power conferences schools had 11 percent of teams below 930.

And while 9 percent of FBS teams haven’t hit 930, 16 percent of FCS teams are below the mark.

That means even more teams from smaller conferences could be in jeopardy of postseason bans when next year’s numbers are released.

While acknowledging money disparities as well as the difference in school goals, NCAA president Mark Emmert pointed out that the UConn men’s basketball team proved all teams are capable of making the grade. Two years ago, UConn was banned because of poor APR scores. This year, the Huskies had a perfect score and won the national championship.