USC football APR scores still below national average


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Last week, the NCAA announced the Academic Progress Rate multi year scores that cover the four-year period between the 2008-09 and 2011-12 academic years, and USC’s football team was subpar compared to the rest of the Pac-12 and the entire nation.

Student-athlete · The John McKay Center, USC’s $70 million, 110,000-square-foot athletic and academic facility that opened in the fall of 2012, houses the Stevens Academic Center, which includes spaces for tutoring, counseling and study and computer labs for student-athletes. - Priyanka Patel | Daily Trojan

Student-athlete · The John McKay Center, USC’s $70 million, 110,000-square-foot athletic and academic facility that opened in the fall of 2012, houses the Stevens Academic Center, which includes spaces for tutoring, counseling and study and computer labs for student-athletes. – Priyanka Patel | Daily Trojan

The Trojans’ score of 945 is four points below the national average for football, and ninth-best in the conference for the second year in a row, after USC was given a multi year score of 947 last year.

The NCAA calculates APR scores by assessing the eligibility, retention and graduation rates of student athletes.

Currently, any score below 925 results in NCAA-mandated penalties, and if it is lower than 900, the team in question is barred from postseason play for the following year.

But in order to qualify for the 2014-2015 postseason, the bar will be raised to a multi-year score of 930, which approximates to about a 50 percent graduation success rate.

Northwestern scored the highest of any FBS team with 996, while New Mexico State (916) scored the lowest.

Stanford (978) received the highest score of any Pac-12 football team, and California (935) recorded the lowest. UCLA scored second-highest in the conference with 966.

USC’s men’s basketball team fared better than their counterparts on the gridiron, recording a 957, five points above the national average. But that score was still only good enough to tie Washington State for eighth place in the Pac-12, as Washington (985) led the conference.

The disclosure of APR scores captured the attention of the sports world last year when Connecticut’s basketball team  became the sport’s first team from a major conference to be banned from postseason play because of its APR score (889).

No basketball or football teams from major conferences are in danger of being barred from next year’s postseason.

Baseball fared the best of any USC team when compared to each sport’s national average, as its score of 990 bettered baseball’s national average by 35 points and was good for third-best in the Pac-12.

Of USC’s women’s teams, basketball received the highest score of 991, which was 19 points above the sport’s national average and second-best in the conference.