It’s hard for any major undertaking to succeed without a plan, including the restoration of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team’s Academic Progress Rate score.
The Mocs, who are still facing scholarship and practice time reductions due to low APR scores, have been working themselves out of a large hole since the NCAA created the academic performance measurement system in 2005.
“It’s been a long process,” athletic director Rick Hart said.
PDF: UTC APR
Hart was hired in May 2006, and fixing UTC’s APR problems has been one of his greatest priorities — and challenges — from the start. Wrestling and women’s soccer are other UTC programs that have faced penalties for poor historical performance.
The football Mocs’ turnaround began with Hart’s arrival, according to Laura Herron, UTC’s senior woman administrator and associate AD for compliance.
“I was the lone compliance person, plus administrator, plus all this, and nobody was really paying attention to the APR,” Herron said. “When he came in, that was one of the assignments he gave me: Learn everything you can, go to all the educational seminars and get a handle on it.”
A big part of Herron’s job is to coordinate and monitor the APR for UTC’s student-athletes. She meets with the teams, as does the academic support staff, files waivers when issues arise and is the day-to-day watchdog for the programs, especially those in danger of falling below the NCAA benchmark score of 925 (out of 1,000).
The NCAA requires all institutions that have underperforming programs to create an academic improvement plan, which they will present to the association and then must live up to in the next academic year.
Part of the reason UTC’s football program was able to avoid being banned from the 2010 playoffs, as it was in 2009, despite an APR score of 867 for 2008-09, was because it was able to meet most of the goals and follow the guidelines in the plan.
“I’m very, very pleased with the direction that our academic improvement plan is taking,” UTC chancellor Roger Brown said.
One of the key elements of the plan was to stop signing junior college players, which UTC hasn’t done since hiring coach Russ Huesman in December 2008. Typically, many credits for juco players didn’t transfer, which put them behind on their progress toward graduation.
There also are no more admissions waivers, which means the admissions standards for student-athletes are the same as those for any high school senior who applies to UTC.
In addition, the plan mandates that the coaches monitor class attendance not only for the current players on the roster but also for those who have exhausted their eligibility and are still in school.
One of the reasons for UTC’s 867 score, Herron said, was that many of the seniors on the 2008 team, following the midseason announcement that Rodney Allison would not be retained as coach, “just gave up” on their grades that fall.
With a strong APR score for 2009-10, which is expected, along with being able to drop an 827 from the rolling four-year average, UTC could move out of the historical penalty phase next year. That would mean no more concerns about postseason bans, no more scholarship reductions and no more practicing four hours a week less than the Mocs’ opponents.
Huesman said he’s looking forward to that day, but he won’t be taking any credit for it happening under his watch.
“This thing goes back a couple of years now,” Huesman said. “Our athletic department’s had a plan long before I got here. It’s a good plan and it’s working.”
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Article: UTC officials happy with progress in APR scores