College athletes are supposed to study, too
Don't miss Robert Bell's story about the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate report.
You also can check out the scores for your favorite school directly from the NCAA here.
Just some observations:
Women's teams generally score better academically than do men's. Why is that?
The lowest-performing sport academically in Division I is baseball. Why?
(Rod Wyatt of UNCG's athletics department blames the Major League Baseball draft, which produces a lot of turnover in college baseball programs.)
The top-performing sports, all women's, are field hockey, lacrosse and rowing.
Some notable academic performances in this area, at least for 2003-04, are:
UNCG men's soccer: 987 (maximum score is 1,000; 925 is considered a passing grade);
UNCG women's basketball: 1,000);
Wake Forest field hockey (national champions): 1,000;
UNC-Chapel Hill men's basketball: 1,000;
High Point University women's soccer: 984;
A&T men's and women's cross country: 1,000;
Nine out of 12 women's sports at Duke: 1,000;
Elon football: 972.
Oh, yes, you can find some bad scores, too.
We'll have an editorial on this subject in Wednesday's edition.