Tuesday, December 5, 2006
College football teams headed for the five major bowls this year performed better academically on the whole than the national average, according to a study released yesterday.
At these top programs, however, the disparity between graduation rates of black and white players increased by nearly double.
The nation's best football teams are generally improving in the classroom, according to an analysis by Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida.
Of the 64 teams invited to bowls this year, 86 percent graduated at least half their players. And 40 of this year's top programs -- 62 percent -- matched or beat the NCAA's new academic progress rate standard, which is intended to more accurately gauge grades and graduation rates.
The statistics Lapchick used are preliminary and don't include the most recent school year.
Perhaps most strikingly, white athletes in the Bowl Championship Series -- the top five bowls, including the BCS title game -- beat their counterparts among the 119 NCAA Division I-A schools by graduating 81 percent of the time, compared with 62 percent division-wide. The black athlete graduation rate was 56 percent among those schools, also better than the 49 percent overall rate.
But the discrepancy between white and black players' graduation rates for top bowl teams -- a 25 percentage-point difference -- was nearly twice the 13-point divide within the NCAA average.
Boston College and Navy, which are meeting in the Meineke Car Care Bowl, had the best academic progress rates of any bowl-bound programs (Navy with 986, BC with 982).
Seven of the eight ACC teams in bowls made Lapchick's top 25 academically: Boston College, Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Maryland, Miami and Wake Forest. . . .
Ohio State middle linebacker James Laurinaitis won the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, awarded to the nation's best defensive player by the Charlotte Touchdown Club.
The sophomore leads the top-ranked Buckeyes with 100 tackles and five interceptions. He also has four sacks. . . .
Rutgers Coach Greg Schiano will stay with the school he led to national prominence this season, rather than pursue taking over the troubled Miami program.
"This is where I want to be. This is the job I want to have," Schiano said.
Schiano, Miami's defensive coordinator in 1999 and 2000, said he told Hurricanes Athletic Director Paul Dee yesterday that he was not a candidate to become their head coach. . . .
Walt Harris was fired as Stanford's coach, two days after the team finished its worst season (1-11) in more than four decades.
Harris had a 6-17 record in the first two years of his five-year contract. . . .
Louisiana Tech fired Coach Jack Bicknell following a 3-10 season.
Bicknell leaves after eight seasons and an overall record of 42-53. . . .
Mississippi linebacker Rory Johnson will pass up his senior season and enter the NFL draft, Coach Ed Orgeron said.
· AUTO RACING: International Speedway Corp. scrapped plans to build a track on Staten Island, stalling NASCAR's dream to bring a race to the New York area.
"While we are disappointed that we could not complete the speedway development on Staten Island, our enthusiasm for the metropolitan New York market is in no way dampened," ISC President Lesa France Kennedy said. "We continue to view the region as a prime location for a major motorsports facility."
· WEIGHTLIFTING: Thailand's Pawina Thongsuk set a world record at 313 pounds in the clean-and-jerk at the Asian Games in Doha, Qatar.
The 27-year-old former physical education student bettered by two pounds the mark set by Russian Svetlana Shimkova earlier this year in Poland.
-- From News Services
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