TCU football posts lowest NCAA academic progress rate in Big 12

For a second consecutive year, TCU football had its lowest Academic Progress Rate — the NCAA’s measure for the academic progress of athletes — since it has been tracked, but the school’s top athletic official said it will improve soon.

The mark of 935 reported on Wednesday was the lowest in the Big 12 and only five points above the minimum 930 required to avoid penalties like loss of practice time and ineligibility for championships. TCU had a 936 in football last year.

The figure reported each year is an average of the past four years, so for TCU, it likely reflects turbulence from the move to the Big 12, athletic director Chris Del Conte said.

“We knew we had two years that were not our best years,” he said. “If you look at our graduation rate and our GPAs, we’re doing a wonderful job. When we moved into the Big 12, we had kids that transferred, we moved some kids out, changed the culture a little bit, whether it be for behavioral sort of things that transpired. And we had a couple of years where we were not healthy.”

Since the NCAA began using APR to track academic progress in 2003, TCU football has been as high as 973.

APR is also used to qualify five-win teams for bowl games if there are not enough eligible teams.

Kansas State topped the Big 12 football programs with a 975 APR. Next were Texas (971), Baylor (969), Iowa State (958), Oklahoma (955), Oklahoma State (947), West Virginia (945), Texas Tech (941), Kansas (936) and TCU.

The maximum APR is 1,000. The NCAA says 930 reflects a 50 percent graduation rate. Teams lose points off the APR for athletes who are ineligible for the spring semester or leave the school without graduating. Athletes who return to finish their degrees add their lost points back to the APR.

“We had a plan in place,” Del Conte said. “You’ll see those numbers in the next three or four years steadily move up the chart to where they usually are.”

Other sports at TCU, except men’s basketball, were comfortably over the 930 minimum.

Baseball had a 962, although that was its lowest mark in five years. Men’s basketball was at 938, up one point from last year. Women’s basketball had a 965, and volleyball had a 979.

Nationwide, NCAA schools in all sports averaged a 979, the NCAA said, up one point from last year. Men’s basketball and women’s basketball each went up three points (to 964 for men and 978 for women). Football also rose three points, from 956 to 959.

This story was originally published April 21, 2016 at 2:29 PM with the headline "TCU football posts lowest NCAA academic progress rate in Big 12."