Most Division I schools don’t have to go to the extremes that Laura Herron does at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Herron chases down Academic Progress Rate points the way Dog the Bounty Hunter goes after fugitives.
Because UTC has several sports — football, wrestling, men’s basketball, women’s soccer — have been hit with penalties by the NCAA in recent years for low APR scores, every point matters, said Herron, UTC’s associate athletic director for compliance and senior woman administrator.
The APR is comprised of points for player retention and points for eligibility and progress toward graduation, with a maximum score of 1,000. The multi-year score is a rolling four-year average, which means one bad year can stick with you for four years.
“It’s intention is really good, to improve graduation rates,” Herron said of the APR. “When you get a bad score everybody thinks you have ineligible students, but it could be a retention issue, as well.”
In a perfect world, where every student-athlete makes As and Bs and graduates on time, the release of the APR is a minor event, a chance for everyone to pat themselves on the back for a job well done.
That’s not the case at UTC, where the APR — the latest scores are expected to be released by the NCAA this week — involves a lot more than just good grades and graduation.
“It is more complex than perhaps most would think it would be,” athletic director Rick Hart said. “But, really, it should be no more complex than progress toward your degree and graduate.”
With the programs that have struggled to stay above the NCAA’s benchmark score of 925 — anything below that, and especially below 900, can lead to penalties — Herron works hard to retain every point she can. Even if a player quit school two or three years ago, those points are still in play through different waivers and adjustments.
There’s not much Herron can do about eligibility issues, but player retention is just as important as eligibility/academic progress, and often there are mitigating circumstances for why players leave — everything from medical issues to a chance to play professionally to natural disasters.
n In 2005, the Biloxi, Miss., home of defensive tackle Reggie Keys was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. After the storm he left school to go help his family, yet UTC took an APR hit because Herron wasn’t able to obtain any documentation from Keys.
“I filed his adjustment and lost that the first year because I didn’t have any proof,” Herron said. “You have a high burden of proof with any waiver.”
The next year, Herron was able to prove it by tracking down Keys and showing the NCAA a Google Earth satellite image of the street the home had been on — a street that no longer had any houses on it.
n Running back Eldra Buckley left UTC after the 2006 football season to try for a professional career. Buckley wasn’t drafted and UTC lost that retention point because there was no way to prove he was pursuing a pro career.
“So for the next year, I was able to show, wonders of the Internet, that he had made the practice squad for San Diego and had gone on to the Eagles,” Herron said. “I was able to file an adjustment and two years later got his point back.
“I like to overload them with information. I Googled him and I got every article I could find. If it’s in the newspaper it gives you some validity.”
n Sometimes a player leaves school for a perfectly acceptable and understandable reason but obtaining the documentation necessary to prove your case to the NCAA is all but impossible.
Former Mocs offensive lineman Jeff Maxi, from Montreal, didn’t return to UTC in the fall of 2009 because his father, whom he lived with, was quite sick.
“If a kid has a critical illness in the family, the last thing they want to do is try to go get doctors notes to send them back to the old school. They’re focused on something else,” Herron said. “He’s in the system for four years and we could go back and reclaim his point if we could get the medical documentation. But when they’re out of the country, it’s not easy.”
Of course, the easiest way to avoid losing the retention or eligibility points, and especially the dreaded 0-for-2s, is to not have them. Herron is confident that the football program, which was banned from the 2009 playoffs and is enduring scholarship and practice-time reductions, will be out of the historical penalty phase “in one year.”
“The reason we’re where we are is because there weren’t enough kids that took enough pride in it to get it done,” second-year coach Russ Huesman said. “It is being fixed, and it was being fixed way before I got here. Now it’s my job to make sure I’m bringing in the right kids and I’m disciplining them enough. That’s my job now.”
Until a point here or there isn’t the difference between keeping or losing a scholarship or postseason eligibility, Herron will continue to make it her job track down and regain every point she can.