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Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Did UGA beat Tech, or did both win?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There are two ways to look at how Georgia and Georgia Tech performed in the academic progress rate figures the NCAA released on Tuesday. I reported it as a win-win; both schools exceeded the NCAA minimums in every sport.
I could have reported it this way: Georgia beats Tech in the highest-profile sports of football and men’s and women’s basketball. (But Tech stomps Georgia in baseball.)
Or I could have reported it: Georgia wins the SEC academic championship in football, comes in second in men’s basketball and places third in women’s basketball (but finishes in the bottom 40 percent nationwide in baseball). Tech finishes sixth in the ACC in football, 10th in men’s basketball and 11th in women’s basketball (but ranks in the top 20 percent nationwide in baseball).
I’ve chosen that path before, and it has some validity. Here’s why I didn’t this time: The world of the APR is pretty much a pass/fail world, and now that there are actually some schools that are failing, that’s where the news is. (In the first couple of years of the APR, there was almost zero in the way of penalties, but the rules got tougher as the NCAA did away with a fudge factor in the penalty process.)
The academic progress rate measures how many scholarship athletes stayed eligible and in school through graduation over the most recent four-year period, from 2003-07. It does not measure how difficult the courses were or whether players had legitimate reasons to leave school. (For example, Tech’s figures will be hurt next year because Colin Peek transferred. He had a pretty good reason to go, as a tight end whose position disappeared with Tech’s change in football offenses.)
An indignant Georgia Southern fan e-mailed me complaining that I didn’t tell the whole story. The Eagles, he said, will turn around their football APR under Chris Hatcher, who was coach for just one of the semesters in the four-year period for which the most recent APR was calculated. The fan blamed the two previous coaches.
Every situation is different, which is one reason the people who created the APR cringe a bit when they see comparisons among schools. Still, people compare.
So here are the numbers, Georgia vs. Tech, for football, men’s and women’s basketball and baseball:
Football: UGA 965, Tech 951. Men’s basketball: UGA 958, Tech 931. Women’s basketball: UGA 971, Tech 957. Baseball: Tech 974, UGA 927.
