Mean Green Blog

Questions continue to roll into the Mean Green Blog on UNT’s APR score, the penalties it received in football and men’s basketball and a few other aspects of the process. I am trying my best to run down all the answers. Here is what I came up with today:

The most often asked question is why UNT received such harsh penalties while other schools with programs that have lower scores were not punished as severely. One factor is the number of 0-for-2 athletes UNT had during the last four years. Athletes earn a point for being academically eligible and another for remaining in school. Schools lose a scholarship for each 0-for-2 athlete if it is under the 925 benchmark set by the NCAA. UNT had multiple athletes leave the school while ineligible and didn’t make it over the 925 mark. Other schools either didn’t have 0-for-2 athletes, were granted waivers or made it over the 925 mark.

As I already mentioned, some schools received waivers if their estimated graduation rate for athletes is 10 percent higher than its student body or because they showed that they are under funded.

Another question that came up today is whether student athletes’ actions in the 2006-07 school year affected UNT’s score. The answer is yes. The report ran through that 06-07 school year. If a player left UNT in the spring of 2007, he cost UNT a point toward its score, two if he left while ineligible.

And finally, a blog reader wanted to know how all UNT’s sports fared. Here is a list:
Men’s cross country – 929
Men’s golf – 961
Men’s indoor track – 938
Men’s outdoor track – 951
Women’s basketball – 979
Women’s cross country – 977
Women’s golf – 977
Women’s soccer – 990
Softball – 942
Women’s swimming – 969
Women’s tennis – 967
Women’s indoor track – 979
Women’s outdoor track – 979
Volleyball -- 984

As usual, UNT’s soccer team led the way. When it comes to the APR, we spend a lot of time talking about what teams don’t do well. It’s worth the time to point out that John Hedlund’s team not only wins year in and year out, it is also consistently one of the school’s top performing teams in the classroom.

And for a parting shot, I thought this quote from UNT director of compliance Daryl Simpson was a key point in today's story that might have been overlooked. UNT might have a hard time getting out of the hole it is in and over the 925 mark, which means each 0-for-2 athlete UNT has will come back to haunt the athletic program.

“We are definitely headed in the right direction,” Simpson said. “But once you start off in a hole — we have been around 915 all four years — it’s going to take a couple of years to get out of it. It’s a four-year average. Can I say next year we are not going to have penalties? I don’t know. It’s an average that takes a couple of good years and dropping off a couple of bad years to correct.”