Marking another milestone in its academic reform efforts, the NCAA today released single-year Academic Progress Rates for Division I head coaches in six sports. What that means at the University of Dayton is there is now another academic performance yardstick that demonstrates UD takes the academic performance of its student-athletes seriously.
Created by the Committee on Academic Performance at the behest of the Division I Board of Directors, the database is designed to create more transparency in the Academic Performance Program and strengthen the accountability of coaches for the academic performance of their student-athletes.
The Head Coach APR Portfolio this year includes baseball, football, men’s and women’s basketball, and women’s indoor and outdoor track and field. All six Flyer head coaches are performing well above the national average.
An average of the last six years of baseball coach Tony Vittorio APR scores is 954, compared to the national average of 938. Third-year head football coach Rick Chamberlin only has two years of APR data, but his average of 988 is 46 points better than the national average.
Men’s basketball coach Brian Gregory has the greatest difference between his score and the national average. Gregory is plus-69 (979 to 930). Women’s basketball coach Jim Jabir’s comparison is 985 to 960. Track coach Adam Steinwach’s numbers are 991 to 965 for the three seasons he has been UD’s track coach (Steinwach’s numbers for indoor and outdoor track are virtually identical.).
NCAA Interim President Jim Isch said the new Head Coach APR Portfolio is not meant to single out coaches but instead highlight the critical role they play in the development of their student-athletes athletically and academically.
“The vast majority of coaches are doing very well, and they take their roles as educators very seriously,” Isch said.
Committee on Academic Performance chair Walter Harrison, president at Hartford, said the Head Coach APR Portfolio is necessary because coaches are the “primary influencers” of their student-athletes.
“They already are held accountable for success on the field or court. These rates extend that transparency and accountability to the classroom, as well,” he said. “The perception is that head coaches don’t care about academics. That isn’t true. I know from my work with the NCAA baseball and men’s basketball academic working groups that head coaches deeply understand the importance of academics.”
Harrison acknowledged that many different people on campus – most notably the student-athletes themselves – influence academic performance. However, the coaches not only recruit the student-athletes to their institutions but also have the closest relationship with individual student-athletes of any other adult at a college or university.
The Head Coach APR Portfolio includes the single-year team APR for head coaches at each institution he or she has been a head coach, along with the average single-year APR in the specific sport for comparison purposes. Interim head coaches are not included in the database.
The six sports for which data are available were chosen based on the national APR profile for that sport, the opportunity to test technical issues within the system and a diverse mix of large and small teams, as well as team and individual sports (see the accompanying chart for most recent single-year APRs for each of the six sports included in this article). The system will be expanded to all Division I sports after the 2010-11 academic year.
