Mocs penalty freeAfter years of punishment for poor APR scores, the UTC football team will have a clean slate in 2011 thanks to a big jump in its scores during the last academic year:Year / One-year / Four-year2005-06 / 827 / 8352006-07 / 931 / 8592007-08 / 915 / 8722008-09 / 867 / 8852009-10 / 985* / 925**--Projections based on the minimum UTC could have scored to avoid penalties.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team is finally out of the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate doghouse.
Thanks to a very good 2009-10 APR score, the Mocs will be penalty free next season after being punished to some degree -- everything from losing scholarships to being banned from the 2009 FCS playoffs -- ever since the NCAA began handing out APR penalties before the 2005-06 academic year.
The NCAA won't announce the 2009-10 APR scores until next spring, but UTC has run all the numbers and filed everything with the NCAA. When the new numbers are released, UTC's four-year average will be at the 925 benchmark or above, which means the Mocs are in the clear.
"We'll celebrate that when it becomes official," athletic director Rick Hart said Wednesday. "To go from where we were to where we've gotten is pretty meaningful."
To get out of the historical penalty phase, which resulted in a loss of scholarships and practice time each of the past three seasons, UTC had to raise its four-year average from 885 in 2008-09 to above 900.
To move out of the contemporaneous phase, which also cost UTC scholarships, the score had to be above 925.
The NCAA prohibits schools from releasing their APR scores early, but based on UTC's average from the previous three years it's easy to determine the score needed to vault the Mocs to 925 or higher.
UTC's other three scores in the four-year rolling average were 931 (2006-07), 915 (2007-08) and 867 (2008-09), so to reach the 925 benchmark the Mocs' single-year score for 2009-10 has to be at least 985. That would give UTC an average of 924.5, which the NCAA would round up to 925.
The Mocs dropped a score of 827 from 2005-06, which attributed to the rolling average jump as much as the high score from last year.
Laura Herron, UTC's senior associate athletic director for compliance and senior woman administrator, said the Mocs have had "at least six scholarship reductions every year" since the NCAA began sanctioning underperforming schools.
"We're to the good point now where we have to worry about replacing good scores," Herron said.
Being penalty free next fall for the first time since the 2005 season means the Mocs can use the full allotment of scholarships, 63 spread over a maximum of 85 players, along with 20 hours of team activities during a six-day week.
The past two seasons, the NCAA has limited UTC to roughly 55 scholarships and 16 hours of activities per week. This fall, the Mocs were also were restricted to a five-day week.
Mocs coach Russ Huesman said the time restrictions didn't affect his team much the past two years, but being short all those scholarships left UTC with some major depth issues.
He said he's happy to get the scholarships back and he plans to sign about 20 players this year, but because he plans to redshirt nearly all of the signing class those depth problems won't be resolved until the 2012 season.
"Getting those scholarships back is big, but that's not going to help us next year," he said.
The Mocs will need for their four-year average to remain above 900 for three years or else they will automatically return to the historical penalty phase. The UTC wrestling program has just moved through that three-year period.
UTC's women's soccer team is the only one currently facing historical penalties and Herron said UTC has applied for a waiver for relief from any penalties following a very good 2009-10 score.
Contact John Frierson at jfrierson@timesfreepress.com or (423) 757-6268. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/mocsbeatCTFP.