Grad rates for teams in New Year's Eve bowls ...

Check out the NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for all of the teams playing in New Year's Eve bowl games. Draw your own conclusions. (See my previous posts on this issue, too.)

Meineke Car Care Bowl --

GSRs:  Texas A&M, 59; Northwestern, 94

Hyundai Sun Bowl –

GSRs:  Georgia Tech, 55; Utah, 62

Autozone Liberty Bowl –

GSRs:  Cincinnati, 79; Vanderbilt, 86

Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl –

GSRs:  Illinois, 76; UCLA, 59

Chick-fil-A Bowl –

GSRs:  Virginia, 68; Auburn, 63

Grad rates for teams in Friday's bowl games ...

Check out the NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for all of the teams playing in Friday's bowl games. (See my previous posts on this issue, too.)

Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl –

GSRs:  BYU, 57; Tulsa, 63

New Era Pinstripe Bowl –

GSRs:  Rutgers, 89; Iowa State, 63

Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl –

GSRs:  Mississippi State, 62; Wake Forest, 81

Insight Bowl –

GSRs:  Oklahoma, 48; Iowa, 83

Another NCAA reform now in limbo ...

Uh-oh. For the second time in that number of weeks, enough NCAA schools have objected to an NCAA reform measure to throw it into limbo. This time, it's a provision adopted in October to allow multi-year Division I  football scholarships rather than the one-year renewable schollies now in place. Because at least 75 schools objected to the rule within 60 days, it will be reconsidered by the NCAA's Division I Board of Governors when it convenes in mid-January 2012.

Earlier this month, the NCAA suspended another new reform measure that would have allowed schools to provide an additional $2,000 stipend -- called a "miscellaneous expense allowance" -- to help some scholarship athletes pay for incidental costs they incur as college students (as noted in previous posts on this blog). It, too, will be reconsidered at the January Board of Governors meeting.

Both measures were initially adopted after NCAA President Mark Emmert called a retreat for college presidents to discuss ways to improve NCAA athletics. Notably, both of these measures are directed at improving conditions for NCAA student-athletes, whose welfare has not been much of a priority for the NCAA in the past.

Kudos to Emmert for pushing these and other proposals aimed at improving the lives of student-athletes. But after such wide and quick dissent among the NCAA member institutions, you have to wonder how much longer they will put up with him and his reform mindset. After all, they hired him and could fire him. Firing him would seem to be a tragedy, perhaps still another indication -- exemplified in the extreme by the very sad events over the past decade or so at Penn State -- that the institution of college football outweighs the welfare of the most-vulnerable and most-expendable people involved with it.

Grad rates for Alamo Bowl and Sports Bowl teams ...

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Check out the NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for all of today's bowl teams. (See my previous posts on this issue, too.)

Champion Sports Bowl --
GSRs: Florida State, 56; Notre Dame, 97

Valero Alamo Bowl --
GSRs: Washington, 76; Baylor, 62

A few things to keep in mind: The NCAA's GSR measure looks at the percentage of players who earned a degree within six years of entering college. The latest data is for those who entered college in 2004, so it's a somewhat dated measure, reflecting how well those students performed academically -- as measure solely by whether they earned degrees or not -- over the past six years. So if a particular college program decided this year to improve the academic success of its players, we wouldn't see results, as measured this way, until six years later. Of course, the opposite of that is true too -- if a program began dropping the ball, so to speak, on working hard to ensure that their players earned degrees, we wouldn't know about it for many years. It's important to note, too, that the GSR calculation doesn't penalize schools for students who, while in good academic standing, leave the program, perhaps to transfer to another school or maybe even go to the NFL before earning their degree. The NCAA makes GSR data available by school and by conference in a searchable database. And see a rather rosy-sounding NCAA news release, too, covering GSRs for all sports.

Grad rates for Holiday Bowl and Military Bowl teams ...

Please support the Beyond Friday Nights blog by clicking on some of the ads on display on the right side of the blog's pages. Now on to other things ...

Check out the NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for all of today's bowl teams. There's quite a variety! (See my previous posts on this issue, too.)

Military Bowl --
GSRs: Toledo, 64; Air Force, 84

Bridgeport Education Holiday Bowl --
GSRs: Texas, 57; California, 54

A few things to keep in mind: The NCAA's GSR measure looks at the percentage of players who earned a degree within six years of entering college. The latest data is for those who entered college in 2004, so it's a somewhat dated measure, reflecting how well those students performed academically -- as measure solely by whether they earned degrees or not -- over the past six years. So if a particular college program decided this year to improve the academic success of its players, we wouldn't see results, as measured this way, until six years later. Of course, the opposite of that is true too -- if a program began dropping the ball, so to speak, on working hard to ensure that their players earned degrees, we wouldn't know about it for many years. It's important to note, too, that the GSR calculation doesn't penalize schools for students who, while in good academic standing, leave the program, perhaps to transfer to another school or maybe even go to the NFL before earning their degree. The NCAA makes GSR data available by school and by conference in a searchable database. And see a rather rosy-sounding NCAA news release, too, covering GSRs for all sports.

GSR rates for teams in today's bowls ...

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Check out the NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for all of today's bowl teams. (See my previous posts on this issue, too.)

Little Caesar's Bowl --
GSRs: Purdue, 59; Western Michigan, 61

Belk Bowl --
GSRs: North Carolina State, 56; Louisville, 66

A few things to keep in mind: The NCAA's GSR measure looks at the percentage of players who earned a degree within six years of entering college. The latest data is for those who entered college in 2004, so it's a somewhat dated measure, reflecting how well those students performed academically -- as measure solely by whether they earned degrees or not -- over the past six years. So if a particular college program decided this year to improve the academic success of its players, we wouldn't see results, as measured this way, until six years later. Of course, the opposite of that is true too -- if a program began dropping the ball, so to speak, on working hard to ensure that their players earned degrees, we wouldn't know about it for many years. It's important to note, too, that the GSR calculation doesn't penalize schools for students who, while in good academic standing, leave the program, perhaps to transfer to another school or maybe even go to the NFL before earning their degree. The NCAA makes GSR data available by school and by conference in a searchable database. And see a rather rosy-sounding NCAA news release, too, covering GSRs for all sports.

Graduation rates for Independence Bowl teams ...

NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for both of tonight's bowl teams are not too bad, especially for one of the teams (See my previous posts on this grad rate issue, too.)

AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl --
GSRs:  Missouri, 66; North Carolina, 75
A few things to keep in mind: The NCAA's GSR measure looks at the percentage of players who earned a degree within six years of entering college. The latest data is for those who entered college in 2004, so it's a somewhat dated measure, reflecting how well those students performed academically -- as measure solely by whether they earned degrees or not -- over the past six years. So if a particular college program decided this year to improve the academic success of its players, we wouldn't see results, as measured this way, until six years later. Of course, the opposite of that is true too -- if a program began dropping the ball, so to speak, on working hard to ensure that their players earned degrees, we wouldn't know about it for many years. It's important to note, too, that the GSR calculation doesn't penalize schools for students who, while in good academic standing, leave the program, perhaps to transfer to another school or maybe even go to the NFL before earning their degree. The NCAA makes GSR data available by school and by conference in a searchable database. And see a rather rosy-sounding NCAA news release, too, covering GSRs for all sports.