NCAA to revise Tournament graduation requirements

Less than half of the players in the NCAA Tournament are required to graduate, a percentage that… Less than half of the players in the NCAA Tournament are required to graduate, a percentage that education officials want to change.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan hosted a teleconference earlier this month to announce reforms to NCAA eligibility standards for playoff basketball teams. The conference was in response to a report that showed large disparities between the success rates of black and white basketball players in the 2011 NCAA Tournament.

Beginning next year, teams will need to have at least a 50 percent graduation rate to qualify for the tournament, which is a 10 percent increase from last year’s 40 percent. The NCAA will switch to the preferred metrics of the Academic Progress Rate for tracking graduation metrics instead of the Graduation Success Rate metric.

The APR uses real-time data from four-year periods to keep track of graduating players. This would ban teams with an APR score below 925 — the equivalent to a 50 percent graduation rate — from playing in the postseason.The NCAA calculates the APR based on the semester-to-semester eligibility and retention of athletes, rather than just graduation rates.

Another revision would restructure the tournament revenue distribution formula, which currently rewards winning games, but does not reward academic benchmarks.

“Over the past five years, $179 million — almost half of the money awarded for appearances in the tournament — went to teams who were not on track to graduate at least half their players,” Duncan said. “There are tens of millions going to programs where their players are not on track to graduate at least half their members … that doesn’t make sense to me.”

The annual report analyzed academic information for the 67 men’s basketball teams competing in the NCAA Tournament. It was issued by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida.

Pitt would meet the new requirements by a margin of 15 percent or less.

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The Pitt men’s basketball team scored a total of 962 out of 1000 for its academic progress rate, graduating 60 percent of black student-athletes and 50 percent of white student-athletes in the past year. Pitt tied for No. 32 in progress rates score for tournament teams. Overall, Pitt graduates 64 percent of basketball student athletes.

“Graduating our student athletes has always been, and remains, the top priority for the University of Pittsburgh’s Athletic Department regardless of sport, gender or any other classification,” E.J. Borghetti, a Pitt Athletic Department spokesman, said in a statement.

The 2011 report said that the Panthers tied for 29th place out of 67 teams for overall in a different measure, the graduation success rate, which measures the six-year graduation rate,with 81 percent graduatiing over six years.

In the 2010 report — which refers to the Graduation Success Rate for the freshman classes of 2000-01 to 2003-04 — the Pitt’s men’s basketball team graduated an average of 67 percent of black players and 100 percent of whites over that six-year period.

The 2009 report has Pitt graduating 70 percent of black and 100 percent of white basketball players, which is higher than this year’s rates of 60 percent of black and 50 percent of white basketball players.

Pitt men’s basketball team’s numbers differ from the overall NCAA average, which shows different rates of success between white and black players.

Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, said during the teleconference that 91 percent of white student-athletes from these tournament teams graduate, whereas only 59 percent of black student-athletes graduate within six years.

And though these reforms were mostly directed toward universities, Ben Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, offered a different view in the teleconference, blaming the coaches for players’ failures.

“The only thing failing schools have in common is lack of leadership from coaches … The real madness is that we tolerate coaches who prepare students for victory on court, but failure in life,” Jealous said.

The Pitt Athletic Department statement said that Dixon has had nothing but a positive effect on the Panthers.

“Under the direction of Coach Jamie Dixon, the men’s program’s APR scores have ranked among the top 10 percent to 30 percent on the NCAA Division I level the past two years,” the statement said. “The most important victory our student athletes can achieve is earning a Pitt diploma, something that will serve them long after they play their final game.”