Apparently, the Ivy League’s standing at the top of the academic world extends to student-athletes, as well.
All of the Ancient Eight schools ranked in the top 22 nationally on the annual NCAA Division I Academic Progress Report (APR), which was released last Wednesday.
Penn ranked third overall and also had the third-highest number of commended teams, given to programs that rank in the top 10 percent within their sport.
According to the NCAA’s website, “each Division I team calculates its APR annually based on the eligibility and retention of scholarship student-athletes. Teams scoring below 925 out of 1000 can face penalties.”
In the Quakers’ case, eight teams received perfect scores, while the 2009 Ivy champion Penn football team had the highest APR score of any football team in the country at 996, well above the football average of 944.
The men’s basketball team, meanwhile, posted the second-lowest APR score among Penn teams at 978.
“I am very pleased with our APR standing, the fact so many teams were cited as outstanding, and that football was singled out as the top Ivy,” Director of Athletics Steve Bilsky wrote in an e-mail. “It’s a credit to our student-athletes, coaches and [Assistant Director of Athletics/Academics] Rosemarie Burnett.
“Since the APR also measures retention, it affirms what we learn from doing exit interviews with graduating seniors and that is our student-athletes love their experience at Penn,” Bilsky added.
Head football coach Al Bagnoli called the score a “huge” accomplishment.
“When you get thrown up on a national basis and you can come out on top, it makes you feel good as a coach that all the things you’re doing … [are] paying off,” he said.
Bagnoli noted that the “different philosophical approach” that Ivy athletic departments take leads to better academic results.
“In our league, we expect and demand our kids graduate,” he said.
While prominent programs like the Syracuse University men’s basketball team and the University of Colorado football team are losing scholarships for poor academic performance, Penn and the rest of the Ivies are thriving.
“We put a lot of demands and expectations on them,” Bagnoli said. “We firmly believe you can come here and win an Ivy League championship and do all the things off the field that you’re supposed to do to ensure that you get yourself a college diploma.”
The same goes for the women’s lacrosse and women’s golf teams, both of which won the league and received perfect APR scores.
Bagnoli credited Burnett’s work in coordination with the athletic department and college offices with helping Penn’s student-athletes succeed in the classroom.
But the APR score could help Red and Blue squads on the field, as well. Now, Bagnoli explained, coaches have a statistic to point to that demonstrates to recruits the balance of academics and sports that can be achieved at Penn.
Don’t expect the book smarts to always translate to the field, though.
“There’s a difference between academic and athletic IQ.” Bagnoli said. “We get kids that are really good students … and then you hope the kid not only has the book smarts — he can look at your playbook and digest it — but he also has some field smarts where he can now under the heat of the battle transfer that knowledge from the playbook onto the field.”
In other words, a high IQ can only take you so far when a couple of massive defenders are breathing down your neck.
