Mean Green

You wanted it. You asked for it. So we went on got it. UNT athletic director Rick Villarreal sat down with the DRC to talk about the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate report Monday. There will be a story in tomorrow’s DRC and DMN.

UNT lost five football scholarships and a men's basketball scholarship to the NCAA tool, which measures a school's ability to keep athletes in school and eligible.

I won't go through what Villarreal had to say now. I have to give you guys a reason to buy the paper or hit our Web site later tonight.

What I will mention now is that UNT really seemed to come up on the short end of the stick when all was said and done, despite the fact that vast majority of its athletes are also good students and its coaches emphasize academics. We have explained over and over again how the APR works, but here it is one more time. Athletes earn one point each semester for remaining in school and another for remaining eligible. As long as a team earns 92.5 percent of its points (thus the 925 benchmark) it won't incur scholarship penalties. If a team falls below 925 and has an athlete drop out while he is ineligible (thus going 0-for-2 on points), that costs a team a scholarship.

What doesn't make a whole lot of sense is how schools receive waivers. Schools that are under-funded or whose athletes graduate at a rate 10 percent higher than their student bodies are exempt from scholarship reductions. Only the graduation rate for athletes is a projection based on their school's APR score. That seems like a bit of a stretch considering the NCAA has only been collecting APR scores for a few years. The system also penalizes schools like UNT that have good overall graduation rates for its student body.

Villarreal was a good sport about providing the information, especially when an editor asked for an extra number early this evening to add to the story.

Any way, it's worth picking up the paper to see what Villarreal had to say about where UNT has been and where it is headed. The future appears as if it will be a lot brighter considering the moves UNT has made to make sure it's athletes are faring well in the classroom and its coaches are bringing in the right type of athletes.

Be sure to come back over the blog to post your thoughts on what Villarreal had to say.