Are you concerned, Gov. Jindal, about this week’s NCAA release of the Academic Progress Rate report for the nation’s collegiate athletic programs?
You should be. They’re an indictment of your administration’s support of Louisiana higher education.
The NCAA sent out its APR reports Tuesday, covering all of its Division I member schools, and eight schools were hit with postseason play bans in different sports because of those reports that measure eligibility and graduation rates.
Five of those schools won’t be in the NCAA basketball tournament even if they go unbeaten this year, and the other three won’t be part of the FCS (formerly I-AA) national championship even if they run the table this fall.
No big deal, huh, gov? It’s only eight out of around 250 D-I schools.
But half of the nation’s great unwashed, in the world of athletic academic performance, make their home in your state — and that’s an embarrassment to all of us.
APRs are calculated annually by the NCAA and are a two-part rating, based on the numbers of athletes that maintain pace toward a degree and remain academically eligible, as well as remain in a program. The most significant of those rates is based on a four-year average, with the just-released scores based on data from the 2006-07 season through the 2009-10 athletic year.
The not-elite eight include a double-barrel assault on Southern’s Jaguars, who were hit with a one-year ban from the postseason in men’s basketball and are also barred from football postseason play this fall. Louisiana-Monroe and Grambling are both banned from the NCAA basketball championship with their APR struggles. ULM’s score in men’s basketball for 2009-10 was 712 out of a possible 1,000 — way below the 925 benchmark for schools to avoid penalties.
ULM has already been booted from the Sun Belt Conference’s own basketball tournament next March. It is unclear yet whether Southern and Grambling will be allowed to play in the SWAC’s basketball tournament, but if they did and one of them won that event, imagine the embarrassment for the league if their tournament champion couldn’t advance to the “big dance.”
Also unclear is Southern’s eligibility for the SWAC football championship game, but that could be a moot point since the SWAC schools don’t participate in the NCAA’s FCS championship bracket anyway.
The nation’s other teams hit with postseason bans were basketball teams at Cal State-Northridge and Chicago State and the football squad at Idaho State.
None of the eight can be considered national athletic powers, and their penalties are as much a statement about resources as they are about poor academic performance. ULM has by far the lowest budget of the state’s FBS (formerly Division I-A) schools, and Southern and
Grambling are at the bottom in funding among the state’s FCS schools.
And who controls that funding? Why, it’s our elected officials. It’s no secret that higher education in Louisiana is a poor stepchild when compared to the financial support given to schools in most other states.
Critics may argue that athletic funding is part of the problem and is a needless expense in tight budget times. But the reality is that athletic funding totals less than 3 percent of the monies funneled into state colleges and universities, and athletics is the conduit for more income and alumni support than just about any other area of any school. Factoring in economic impact in their communities, the state’s combined athletic programs more than pay for themselves.
Instead of pointing at that 3 percent, the questions that need to be answered: Are the other 97 percent of our schools’ departments struggling just as much as compared to their peers elsewhere? And does the lack of a finite measuring stick, such as the one provided by the APR to gauge athletic academic performance, mean that our schools are way behind in so many other areas besides athletics?
The answer to both questions, unfortunately, is yes.
University presidents and administrators, even those who are hamstrung by dwindling resources in Louisiana, almost universally call their athletic programs their “front porch,” their “windows” — the most visible parts of their schools.
Governor, those windows at ULM, Grambling and Southern look pretty dirty right now, and someone’s got to do something about it pretty darn quick before the lack of state support sends others into the abyss.
[Veteran sports writer Dan McDonald, who worked as a sports information director on the Division I level for 23 years — the last 19 at UL Lafayette from 1980-99 — will be inducted into the College Sports Information Directors Hall of Fame in late June at College Sports Information Directors of America’s national convention in Marco Island, Fla. McDonald is vice president of McD Media Inc., a marketing and public relations firm founded by his wife, Mary Beth, and is a regular contributor to The Independent.]
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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