Head coaches hold significant sway over the athletes on their teams. So why not hold those coaches accountable for the academic performance of the athletes they recruit?
After a year and a half of tinkering, officials of the NCAA have rolled out a new database that they hope will accomplish just that. The first-ever Head Coach APR Portfolio, as the data set is called, includes single-year academic-progress rates—the NCAA’s metric for gauging how well a team does in the classroom—for head coaches in six Division I sports. (The database will be expanded to include the rates for head coaches in all NCAA sports at the conclusion of the 2010-11 academic year.)
The academic-progress rate, which is now in its sixth year, assigns scores to all Division I teams based in large part on the retention rates and academic eligibility of their athletes. The new “portfolio” for coaches, available to the public on the NCAA’s Web site in a searchable format, shows the single-year team scores for each program a coach has led, dating back to 2003-4. The NCAA will update the database every spring when it releases new academic-progress rates for teams.
Unlike the academic-progress rate for athletes, which can trigger penalties for some teams that fail to achieve a certain score, the new mechanism for coaches carries no threat of punishment. Instead, NCAA officials say, it is intended only to increase the transparency of head coaches’ academic priorities and aid recruits and their families, as well as athletic directors and college presidents, in evaluating how seriously a coach takes academics.
“Some people say these rates are unfair, that coaches can’t control what an athlete does or doesn’t do,” said Walter Harrison, president of the University of Hartford and chairman of the NCAA’s Committee on Academic Performance, which created the database.
“Coaches are the primary influencers of their student-athletes, and they’re already held accountable for the success on the field or court,” said Harrison, speaking this afternoon during a conference call with reporters. “These new rates extend that accountability to the classroom as well.”
10 Responses to Making the Grade
rburns - August 5, 2010 at 3:51 pm
Coaches held responsible for players’ grades??? You’ve got to be kidding. At Louisville the coach isn’t even held responsible for his own disgraceful public actions. As long as Coach wins games he won’t be held responsible for any crime, sin, or lack of person/professional integrity. And that’s a fact.
jesor - August 5, 2010 at 4:02 pm
I think the point of this is that parents and students who have choices between different programs will look at it and weigh this as part of their decision. In an ideal world, a coach with a bad rating would have a hard time getting recruits, the program’s success will decline and the coach who can’t win and has failing students will be fired. On the other hand there are a lot of parents and students who care more about winning on the field than being successful in the classroom. Ultimately though, all this may do is swell the ranks of the “Rocks for Jocks” classes as coaches try to get their numbers up.
weberatou - August 5, 2010 at 4:24 pm
In the October 24, 2008 issue of The Chronicle, Gerald Gurney and I proposed that there was “A Better Way to Measure Coaches’ Wins and Losses.” It’s clear that student-athletes are often recruited without regard to the student side of the equation and suffer from being unable to compete in the classroom. It’s equally clear that the coaches who recruit without regard to students’ academic lives are behaving unethically and there should be a mechanism available to address this. In the current system the coach grows rich on the labor of the student-athlete who often fails to gain the benefit of education, and also fails to realize the dream of instant riches through athletics.
naugybob - August 5, 2010 at 4:50 pm
This could be a valuable tool in the coach evaluation tool box of the conscientious and courageous A.D., president and board chair seeking to add academic success to the equation of : wins + ciizenship + classroom success. Alas, add this to the list of the ideal university which puts the student at the center of the enterprise. Will the NCAA advocate the “student” in student-athlete? And so it goes…..
rburns - August 5, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Jesor: “coaches who can’t win and have failing students will be fired.” Babe, the only thing that gets coach fired is lack of wins. Failing students don’t count at all in the equation. If it isn’t true at your alma mater right now it surely is true in other members of that conference–no matter which conference. Check out the degree completion and GPA stats. As long as coach is a celebrity through winning games and will promise the recruit and his/her family a rich (in every sense of the term) experience on campus and afterward, recruits will come. They all were stars in HS and they all think they will be stars on campus and then go to the pros, too. Increasingly it is the case that the truly talented recruit, and the coach, and the rest of them know from the start that the recruit will play at the university no more than one year before he tosses aside all that education and character development and leadership skill for a fat pro contract. It is this level of ego and greed, from coaches, parents, and recruits (and AD’s and presidents and board chairs) that is the true disgrace. And privately they all know it is an educational sham that lacks any regard for anything you honestly could call a student-athlete (let alone a scholar-athlete). The name of the game is money, and the path to that money is wins, plain and simple.
gailhdavis - August 5, 2010 at 11:55 pm
A coach can be totally supportive and demanding of academic achievement and they want; however, some students are simply there for the wrong reason.
12116399 - August 6, 2010 at 2:22 am
Years ago when I was a teaching assistant at Georgetown, I was hired by the basketball coach to tutor the team in history. This was necessary in part because their punishing schedule made it extremely difficult for them to find the time to master the material. One of the reasons I was hired was that I had no interest in basketball and had never even seen a game. So they knew I would concentrate on history. When I noticed some of the players were not confident with writing papers I added this and study skills to our sessions. This initiative could be very useful in providing those coaches who do care about educational attainment with an argument for a support system for their players from the entire college.
trendisnotdestiny - August 6, 2010 at 9:33 am
@ rburnsFirst, you need to be more selective about the sports you discuss. Second, there are only a few revenue sports (basketball and football for most schools) and many non-revenue sports. Third, I have been a coach in a non-revenue sport for over a decade and your characterization of coaching is misinformed. Coaching sports like rowing, track, wrestling, tennis, volleyball, swimming/diving, soccer and golf are less glamorous and about the money than you think. They often serve as the community, academic, and relational counterbalances to revenue sports.Lastly, what gets coaches fired is making large mistakes in recruiting, athletic department staff interactions, budget, asking for more assistance and not winning, and poor parent/athlete exit interviews. Winning affects all of these things as success makes recruiting easier, less potential for conflict in the department, and supports the coaches and adminstrations’ belief that they are contributing to a growing success. The secret of college athletics for coaches is once you get in the door: IT IS HOW YOU TREAT PEOPLE (winning or losing). Revenue sports have a different master: alumni, fund raising, the most visible actors in the branding wars of college athletics. So money guides the process and outcomes are what retains and fires coaches. However, college athletics is more than just basketball and football on the men’s side.
trendisnotdestiny - August 6, 2010 at 9:34 am
TYPO: Less about money than you think
spork - August 19, 2010 at 7:01 am
Your article fails to discuss the validity of the NCAA’s definition of “academic progress.”