Advertisement

Friday, November 30, 2007

KU’s ranking not adding up in academics

By Jonathan Kealing

Advertisement

Talib named All-American

This morning the American Football Coaches' Association named junior cornerback Aqib Talib a first-team All-American.

Reader poll

Is the KU football team performing well enough in the classroom?

  • Yes 60% 343 votes
  • No 30% 172 votes
  • Undecided 9% 53 votes

568 total votes.

KU football

It's a good thing for some schools that the Bowl Championship Series, or BCS, rankings are computed based on athletic performance and not academics.

While Kansas University is ranked No. 5 in the BCS standings, its theoretical "academic BCS" puts KU at No. 17.

The academic rankings are based on a formula that relates team graduation rates to the university's graduation rates, with allowances for disparity among races. That total is added to the difference between the NCAA-computed Academic Progress Rate and the average APR for all Division 1A football teams.

The formula was created by the New America Foundation, the group that seeds the 65-team March Madness bracket based on team academics. This is its first football ranking.

KU's numbers add up to about 34 points, better than Big 12 school Texas and about the same as rival Missouri. Texas picked up 7.85 points, and Missouri had 34.25 points.

The poll was led by Boston College with 127.8 points, Cincinnati with 97.25 points and Auburn with 73.15 points.

KU came up short primarily in that its 2005-06 APR was 16 points below the national average. In the most recent year, KU's APR moved up dramatically; however, the APR is based on a multiyear average.

In its analysis, Lindsey Luebchow of the foundation wrote that for some schools, including Missouri, a racial disparity was a major factor in weighing down the school's point total.

"Its overall football graduation rate masks a large black-white gap: 40 percent of Missouri's black football players : graduated, compared to 68 percent of its white football players," Luebchow wrote.

Kansas was cited in the report, but merely to illustrate a broader point and not because its data was particularly high or low in any area.

The foundation pointed out that a team full of Todd Reesings - an economics and finance major - is hard to compare with a team made up entirely of general studies majors.

KU Associate Athletic Director Jim Marchiony said he was pleased with the direction the football team's academics were taking.

He pointed out the team's rising APR as well as the fact that two Jayhawks, Russell Brorsen and John Larson, were named among ESPN The Magazine's Academic All-Americans on Thursday.

"I think it shows the emphasis in the program and of the coaches on academics," he said.

More like this

Comments

drum1984 (anonymous) says...

17th best APR in the country = pretty damn good. What exactly is the point of the title of this article?

November 30, 2007 at 4:06 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

Nutflush21 (anonymous) says...

I honestly dont care if any of our athletes ever go to class. They are grown men and if they are too dumb to take advantage of a free education then so be it. Just stay out of trouble with the law and win some games.

November 30, 2007 at 5:19 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

lhohman3 (anonymous) says...

Very interesting computation of studies on this. I'd honestly be curious to understand how a primarily all-white and academically endowed school like Vanderbilt did in this study, which values academics in the highest degree but who's football athletes are primarily minority scholarship players? Also Notre Dame would be curious to know. Maybe this ranking makes our scholar athletes look better than most in general - but possibly this might say less with regards to the academic/educational/intellectual standards of our footall team and more with this university's overall graduation rate or lack thereof? IE- The lower overall graduation rate for a university as an entire institution the higher the value of the scholar athlete's percentage of graduation? Seems a bit bias to me & gears more towards the lack of academic standards of the college as a whole.

IE- A blind mute could theoretically graduate from KU if they simply went to class? This does not hold true for several other colleges though.

November 30, 2007 at 5:19 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

JBurtin (anonymous) says...

Depends on the Major. I for one could never expect to pass my classes simply by showing up to class. If I majored in psych., it would be a different story. I have a minor in psych. and I have yet to have ever broken a sweat to pass any of those classes. They're useful, but definitely an easy A.

I have also heard stories from some supposed academic elite schools that make me much less impressed. A guy I know went to an Ivy league school and spent the entire time blasted out of his skull on the best drugs money can buy, yet he had a great GPA. He came back to Kansas and tried to do the same thing and flunked out in a semester. His parents sent him back to the "academic elite" school. As it turns out the parents of the students at schools like that are just too powerful, professors are afraid to flunk anyone for fear of being fired.

November 30, 2007 at 7:51 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

wcormode (William Cormode) says...

Nutflush - you dont care if they go to class? That is the point isnt it?

November 30, 2007 at 7:54 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

greatabu (anonymous) says...

This isn't a ranking of all 119 1A schools. This is a ranking of the top 25 in the BCS. So we came in 17th out of 25.

November 30, 2007 at 8:13 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

wi_jayhawk (anonymous) says...

I wonder if they controlled the study for to some extent for the size of the school.

As someone who's done some research on the topic, the study is pretty legit. So many schools with major athletic programs never graduate any of their athletes, or at least hardly any of their Black and minority athletes. To be ranked above the top 20 sits well with me.

And Nutflush, I agree with wcormode...if you just want to cheer for athletes, find a professional team. Otherwise, remember that these individuals are called "student-athletes" for a reason. Do you not think that we should focus on giving these guys the skills to survive after college, since the majority will not play pro or semi-pro football after this? Show some care about the future of these athletes, and don't just use them for what they can give the school through athletics, right now!

November 30, 2007 at 8:37 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

bennettcl (anonymous) says...

This article is misleading. How bout you compare our APR to more then just Texas and Missouri. Where do we compare with the rest of the big 12. I for one am not surprised by our number. I'm guessing that our APR is pretty low because in the past few years we haven't necessarily recruited top of the line 4 or 5 star recruits. So for one I'm not worried about this APR at the moment. I think as we continue to build our program and if continue to have a ranked team for the next 10 years you'll see our APR raise. I think with a ranked team you will continue to recruit better players that care about football and education and will make it to graduation.

November 30, 2007 at 8:45 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

remlap101 (anonymous) says...

I should hope we would strive for 100% graduation at a 4.0 average and settle for 99% at a 3.9. These athletes are a part of the future. Great topic, poor article.

November 30, 2007 at 8:59 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

DSommersby (anonymous) says...

The title of the article is misleading.

November 30, 2007 at 10:40 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

klong (anonymous) says...

I have to agree with you Nutflush. I know it may sound bad, but I don't really care what your GPA is. I want to see good plays on the field. That said, they should want to graduate. The chances of them going pro are very small. It's all on them to make the choice. My motto is "just win baby".

November 30, 2007 at 10:40 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

Jayhawk86 (anonymous) says...

If you want to take a look at the study, Here you go.

http://www.newamerica.net/blogs/educa...

November 30, 2007 at 10:50 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

dagger108 (anonymous) says...

Interesting tidbit from the source article. The 12th man approach to improving the team's ranking. Get more people to enroll and then drop out without graduating.

The formula measures how football players peform compared to the other students at their own school, not compared to the other students at the other schools on the list.

Boise State only graduates 35% of students in the university, so if 32% of the FB team graduates they go to the top of the list. If KU graduates twice as many students, it also has to graduate twice as many FB, or the team is penalized relative to the other teams.

The study doesn't compare teams to teams, it compares students to non-students, and that is just one of the falicies in the statistics and reporting. A decent mathematician can make stats say most anything they want. Just ask an MU fan. They can prove that they are better than everybody, even the OU team that beat them a month ago.

November 30, 2007 at 11:53 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

Studogg (anonymous) says...

I don't think this article give us enough information to really answer the poll question "is the KU football team performing well enough in the classroom?" Sure we have some numbers from ONE study that shows we could be doing better. But those same numbers say we could be doing a lot worse, too. I think that poll question is far too broad to be answered after reading one article.

November 30, 2007 at 2:55 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

bobsarobot (anonymous) says...

i like how the study factors in "disparity among races". does each black or latino player count for three-eighths of a real human athlete? how stupid. why not count all athlete's academic achievements? why even have this b.s. study?

November 30, 2007 at 7:53 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

Nutflush21 (anonymous) says...

College athletics is clearly a multi-milliion dollar business and the NCAA having the APR is an absolute joke. Obviously these men have a tremendous opportunity to take advantage of a higer education. But these "student-athletes" are grown men and if they dont want to go to class then who cares. They will be the ones bummin it back in their hometown wal-mart.

November 30, 2007 at 9:50 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

lhohman3 (anonymous) says...

I disagree with the idea that all of these student athletes are "grown men." Young adults, maybe, grown ups, not as likely. And I don't mind the dispaity among races if the study is not intentially used to ostracize or lessen anyone's value which I don't think this study was intentially doing, but to help understand to a finite degree these mainly less fortunate student athletes who likely have less initial academic opportunities prior to ever attending a college classroom.. Factor in the scenerio that many minority student athletes have been looked upon as semi-pro athletes since the age of 12 (recruitments, top 100 listings, expansions of the college scouting systems, etc) and you have the makings of a potential academic diaster I feel. It's most likely a big problem everywhere on various levels and the higher the degree of athletic success at a school the more probability for their to be a higher drop out rate unfortunately...

November 30, 2007 at 10:58 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

Sparko (anonymous) says...

Honestly, college athletes actually work more than full-time, and are "non-traditional" students at best. How much time do they have between practices, work-outs and travel to study? If the NCAA cared about academics, it would have a four-game exhibition series. If academics were stressed along with other factors in rankings, colleges would be under even greater pressure to inflate the grades of athletes.

Athletics is prestige and a revenue stream for a university. The country writ large is still arguing about evolution. Seems to me that athletics isn't the only thing deficient academically in America. AND don't get me started on the "press."

December 1, 2007 at 11:05 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

swjhawk (anonymous) says...

It's "fallacy" not "fallicy" and illustrates that they are student athletes. If they are not, they don't belong at an educational institution like KU. I'm not proud of being a Jayhawk because of its athletics but its academics.

December 1, 2007 at 6:56 p.m. ( | suggest removal )