NCAA’s new policy on APR (Academic Progress Rate)
As a general rule, a new coach has four years to start winning and most lately the tolerance window for turning a program around is more like three years. If this is not pressure enough; how would you like to walk in Tubby Smith’s shoes? A twenty win season at KY could still get you fired. Sure he gets paid a lot of money, but if your not winning the SEC Tournament and going to the Final Four every year, your probably not long for the Bluegrass. Tubby has a record of 241 wins and 74 losses in 10 years at KY and there are at least five websites petitioning for him to be fired. Since being hired ten years ago, KY has won a NCAA National Championship and dominated the SEC. Now factor in the new APR requirements; a division I basketball team with thirteen scholorships has to maintain a 92.5% score per year out of a possible 4 points per athlete. This means that a squad of thirteen players could receive a maximum of 52 points and can drop to no less than 49 points (because the NCAA rounds up the points this translates to 3 points per year) before they are penalized. So a player that does not make the grades for one season or does not pass at least 12 hours cost the team a point, a player that is a turd and has to be kicked off cost the team two points (1 for leaving school and 1 for not returning), the player that comes for one year and gets home sick or leaves for the NBA cost the team a point. In this scenario the team would fall below the 92.5% requirement and be subject to penalty.
For an APR example from the NCAA click on the following site: http://www.ncaa.org/wps/portal/newsdetail?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/wps/wcm/connect/NCAA/NCAA+News/NCAA+News+Online/Division+I/Sample+APR+calculation+-+2-14-05+NCAA+News&TITLE=Sample+APR+calculation+-+2-14-05+NCAA+News
I am all for academics, but this has made it even tougher for coaches to recruit and bring in the kind of talent necessary to keep their jobs. The top talent such as blue chippers that are looking to go straight to the NBA will be avoided by NCAA coaches and most likely end up at a prep school. The points will become too valuable to waste on a top talent. Balancing all of the areas of coaching in the NCAA has always been a tough task and with the new APR it just got a little tougher.
