Can Academic Progress Help Collegiate Football Teams Win?
Jeffrey W. Lucas, University of Maryland Michael J. Lovaglia, University of Iowa INTRODUCTION Recently, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) released its first Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores for its football and basketball programs. The APR measures how well athletic programs educate student athletes and will be used to sanction programs that do not perform well academically. With these new academic reforms, the NCAA has taken the groundbreaking step of linking athletic success to academic success. Proposed NCAA sanctions for collegiate athletic programs that fail to adequately educate student-athletes highlight the prevailing view that athletic success comes at the expense of academic progress. Some research, including research sponsored by the NCAA, has found that high-visibility athletic programs do not help to financially support the academic missions of universities (Litan, Orszag and Orszag 2003, Shulman and Bowen 2001). Research also has found no link between
