Marcus: Gophers barely missed losing scholarships due to APR score

BleedGopher

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per this tweet:

"NCAA's latest APR scores were released and it looks like Gopher football barely missed losing scholarships with 932 score. Minimum was 930."

Go Gophers!!
 

I tweeted back at him with a question, haven't heard a response.

I'm pretty sure APR calculates three years worth of graduation rates, right? If that's the case, I'm not too worried about this as Coach Kill made it very clear the academics were a mess last fall. According to the most recent post I've seen on here, the team has a cumulative GPA now of above 3.0, which isn't bad at all in my opinion.
 

I tweeted back at him with a question, haven't heard a response.

I'm pretty sure APR calculates three years worth of graduation rates, right? If that's the case, I'm not too worried about this as Coach Kill made it very clear the academics were a mess last fall. According to the most recent post I've seen on here, the team has a cumulative GPA now of above 3.0, which isn't bad at all in my opinion.

I believe it's a 4-year average thing. If we're above the line now, I'm thinking it's very likely we won't have to worry about any issues going forward with the APR, I could be wrong though, I'm just guessing.
 




So the four year avg was 932, but last year was 917?

The 917 is for Brew's final year combined with Kill's first spring. I don't think a lower score is unexpected given the attrition that accompanies a coaching change.

I think Monty is right. Based on what we've seen thus far from Kill on this front, we should be ok moving forward.
 

There is some bad information in that article.

The relevant APR figure will be a four year rolling average. Today, it's not the only one. (Also, the APR does not measure graduation rates.)

For the 08-09 school year, Brewster posted a 968 score. That is amazing for this (and for many) football program.

(I'd also point out the scores released by the U may not be the real (i.e., final) scores... should know shortly)

Hopefully the APR scores for football look as good as the GPAs reported did for 2011-12. That score and this upcoming academic year are very important.

Today, the relevant cut line is 900 for the 4-year and 930 for 2-year. You want to be good on either one of those.

In two years, you'll need 930/4-yr or 940/2-yr in order to be bowl-eligible. The following year, the 930/4-yr requirement will be phased-in for the U.

That said, the football program needs decent-to-healthy scores for 2011-12 and 2012-13 or they'll risk not being bowl eligible even if the team starts winning.
 

Good to know JB, I thought there were some changes coming. Hopefully this last year was as legit as early reports seem to be indicating.
 

As I recall, Kill was expecting that the U would lose a scholarship or two due to APR this year, mostly based on not being able to raise the average enough. So if they don't lose one, that is great!
 



I almost missed a birdie putt once, luckily it went in after circling the cup! Love to hate this style of writing. Gopher story =turn it into a negative spin. Good job again, Fuller. Why read this drivel!
 

"Unfortunately, when I made the decision not to renew coach Brewster, there were some athletes who didn't do as well academically as we would have liked," Maturi said. "There wasn't a coach who had a hammer over them (to keep players eligible) because there was no head coach at the time."

So what the Fudge did Maturi do about it during the interim? Sounds like nothing and left the mess to Coach Kill, much to his dismay.
 

So what the Fudge did Maturi do about it during the interim? Sounds like nothing and left the mess to Coach Kill, much to his dismay.

That's not Maturi's job. He's responsible for a whole athletic department, not just the football team. It's an unavoidable reality of the transfer of power between coaches. There will almost always be some fallout. There was only a little over a week between the Iowa game and Kill's hire, but it is a terrible confluence of circumstances:

A. It's right before finals, when students really need to buckle down and do well, as everyone knows that finals are a disproportionate part of the grade for most classes.
B. The outgoing staff is busy packing up their offices, their homes, looking for new jobs, homes, schools for their kids, etc. They have way too much on their plates to deal with student problems, unfortunately.
C. The incoming staff has to do all of the same as in B., except in reverse. There is a time window where they have to get "settled in" before they can really deal with the "meat" of the job, including academics.

So, in reality, there is probably an effective window of 2-3 weeks where no one on the coaching staff is available to crack the whip on players, and some will inevitably fall through the cracks. The only way to avoid it is when the interim is retained by the new staff (e.g. Luke Fickell at Ohio St.), and there is no "interruption in service". As we all know, it very rarely comes to pass that old staff are retained, so there is almost always fallout and it cannot be avoided in most circumstances.

Then again, some will always look for a reason to excoriate Maturi, no matter the circumstances.
 

That's not Maturi's job. He's responsible for a whole athletic department, not just the football team. It's an unavoidable reality of the transfer of power between coaches. There will almost always be some fallout. There was only a little over a week between the Iowa game and Kill's hire, but it is a terrible confluence of circumstances:

A. It's right before finals, when students really need to buckle down and do well, as everyone knows that finals are a disproportionate part of the grade for most classes.
B. The outgoing staff is busy packing up their offices, their homes, looking for new jobs, homes, schools for their kids, etc. They have way too much on their plates to deal with student problems, unfortunately.
C. The incoming staff has to do all of the same as in B., except in reverse. There is a time window where they have to get "settled in" before they can really deal with the "meat" of the job, including academics.

So, in reality, there is probably an effective window of 2-3 weeks where no one on the coaching staff is available to crack the whip on players, and some will inevitably fall through the cracks. The only way to avoid it is when the interim is retained by the new staff (e.g. Luke Fickell at Ohio St.), and there is no "interruption in service". As we all know, it very rarely comes to pass that old staff are retained, so there is almost always fallout and it cannot be avoided in most circumstances.

Then again, some will always look for a reason to excoriate Maturi, no matter the circumstances.

I don't want to excoriate Maturi, but I would disagree somewhat with your statement.

If I have the authority and choose to fire the guards at Fort Knox, it may not be my job to guard the place, but it is my job to make sure it's guarded. On that same concept, when Maturi (and/or his superiors) made the decision to fire Brewster and then decided not to retain Horton, it was on Maturi to make sure the inmates weren't running the assylum. Additionally, football's APR affects the overall APR, so it is Maturi's job to make sure that at least someone is doing what they can to keep it up.

That doesn't mean there won't be a hit. I do agree that with a coaching change the APR will dip. There are always going to be some students who take the firing very hard and let it affect their studies. Not to mention transfers. But at least from the outside, it never seemed like there was anyone from the AD office stepping in to make sure things didn't fall apart before Kill was hired.
 



I don't want to excoriate Maturi, but I would disagree somewhat with your statement.

If I have the authority and choose to fire the guards at Fort Knox, it may not be my job to guard the place, but it is my job to make sure it's guarded. On that same concept, when Maturi (and/or his superiors) made the decision to fire Brewster and then decided not to retain Horton, it was on Maturi to make sure the inmates weren't running the assylum. Additionally, football's APR affects the overall APR, so it is Maturi's job to make sure that at least someone is doing what they can to keep it up.

That doesn't mean there won't be a hit. I do agree that with a coaching change the APR will dip. There are always going to be some students who take the firing very hard and let it affect their studies. Not to mention transfers. But at least from the outside, it never seemed like there was anyone from the AD office stepping in to make sure things didn't fall apart before Kill was hired.

I agree completely (and I'm not even a Maturi-basher).
 

If I have the authority and choose to fire the guards at Fort Knox, it may not be my job to guard the place, but it is my job to make sure it's guarded. On that same concept, when Maturi (and/or his superiors) made the decision to fire Brewster and then decided not to retain Horton, it was on Maturi to make sure the inmates weren't running the assylum. Additionally, football's APR affects the overall APR, so it is Maturi's job to make sure that at least someone is doing what they can to keep it up.

Fair point, but it's not a strong analogy. In your scenario, you can fire the guards at Fort Knox and already have the replacements lined up before they're even fired, or have a very quick turnaround. Moreover, unless you're firing the entire guard corps all at once (unlikely), you still have several other guards and you can ask them to work overtime, extra shifts, etc. to pick up the slack until you're fully staffed again. You might go from, say, 50 guards to 45 temporarily, but everyone can pick up the slack until you're back up to 50. In such a high-profile position as a BCS football coach, you can't even be sniffing around replacements without everyone and their mom knowing it, so it's not reasonable to have a replacement lined up, or available for quick turnaround. In addition, it's not as though you have staff who can pick up the slack. You're firing the whole staff at once, so you go from 9 to 0 the day the season ends.The coaches are the only people able and responsible for their duties, and there is literally no one available to work overtime or take on additional responsibilities temporarily. The only way around it would have been for Maturi to hire himself as a coach temporarily (so he could fulfill all the duties that are assigned by NCAA rule to coaches only), and ask an associate AD to pick up the slack for him until a new coach is hired. That's not only very impractical at a school with a ~$78 million athletics budget, I don't think anybody wants Maturi to be the acting head football coach, even for a day. At a school where the AD is an experienced football coach (Osborne at Nebraska, Alvarez at Wisconsin, Bellotti formerly at Oregon, etc.), this would be practical, but not with Maturi, and not at Minnesota. Unless my memory is faulty, Pat Haden temporarily named himself acting head coach between Carroll and Kiffin. He did this so USC could still meet with recruits, address players, etc. This was also not ideal, but at least Haden had high-level football experience as a Division I and professional football player, while Maturi has no coaching or athletic experience above the HS level.
 

Some additional thoughts on Gopher football APR can be found here. Unless Maturi is completely BS'ing or confused on his recent comments about the 2011-12 football APR scores looking very good, football is probably in somewhere between 'OK to fine' shape. Wouldn't expect he's BS'ing here, as it's information that will be fully revealed in the future, so I'm expecting something around Brewster's strong 2008-09 year. That would put football in fine shape for awhile.
 




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