Mocs athletes hit class

UTC players taking academics, APR seriously

The turnaround of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football program is about much more than winning games. There's an academic turnaround in the works, as well.

The players and coaches are not only trying to build a playoff contender out of the long-struggling program, they're also having to dig UTC out of a massive Academic Progress Rate hole.

Junior All-Southern Conference safety Jordan Tippit said he feels "a responsibility" to not only do his part on the field and in the classroom, but to help his teammates, especially the younger ones, do the same.

"I do feel a sense of responsibility to help the incoming freshmen, the guys that we helped recruit, to get them in here and on the right page," he said, "and teaching them what needs to be done in order for us to get to the playoffs."

To get to the playoffs, UTC has to first be eligible for the playoffs, which it wasn't last season.

Because of it's low four-year APR score last year, UTC was banned from the 2009 playoffs by the NCAA, which also cut the Mocs' scholarships and practice time. The penalties were the result of poor player retention and academic progress during the preceding four years, from 2004-05 through 2007-08.

The Mocs had an average of 870 (out of 1,000) during that four-year stretch, well below the NCAA benchmark of 925 and the historical penalty mark of 900. One of the reasons the average was so low was an off-the-field incident in the fall of 2005, when six players were kicked out of school while being investigated in an alleged rape case that produced no criminal convictions.

The program had a score of 827 for the 2005-06 academic year, a score that is still part of the current four-year average. That score will drop off next year, when the 2006-07 score is the oldest used, and by then, according to Laura Herron, UTC's associate athletic director for compliance, the Mocs will be above 900.

"This academic year, '09-'10, will replace the last bad year that we really had when we first started out," Herron said. "Even though we have penalties for next season, they're actually for the '08-'09 APR. We'll have to endure some penalties, but we will be out of the historical penalty structure with this year."

Earlier this year, UTC announced that it will be eligible for the 2010 playoffs after the NCAA granted the program conditional relief from the ban. Following a coaching change that led to some player attrition, a common occurrence, UTC's 2008-09 APR score went down for the first time in three years, to around 870, athletic director Rick Hart said in February.

The NCAA is expected to release the latest APR data this month. UTC already knows that it will be hit with another scholarship reduction (down to 55.18 out of 63) and its team activities will be limited to 16 hours over five days instead of the standard 20 hours over six.

Tippit said it stinks that current players "have to pay for stuff that" previous players did, but to a man he said the Mocs are determined to do their part to bring the scores up and eliminate the penalties.

"Everybody has the same mentality of, I don't want to be that guy to keep us down and not allow us to go to the playoffs. That incentive right there is keeping everybody going," said Tippit, one of 36 Mocs to earn academic honors last fall. "You might not talk about it, but it's pushing you -- every day it's pushing you."

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