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Big 12 teams facing NCAA scholarship cuts
02:04 PM CST on Wednesday, March 1, 2006
By BRIAN DAVIS / The Dallas Morning News


The NCAA unveiled a list of teams Wednesday that will face scholarship cuts as a result of low academic performance, and the news isn’t good at several Big 12 schools.

Texas, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State will all lose 1.17 scholarships in baseball for low scores in a sport that annually struggles with athlete retention and academic progression. UTA will also lose 1.17 scholarships in a sport that grants only 11.7 scholarships to begin with.

All four schools had academic progress rates under the accepted standard of 925, according to information released by the NCAA.

The controversial APR rates were implemented two years ago to better judge a team’s academic performance as opposed to the federally mandated reviews that were criticized as being out of date upon their release.

“If you’re going to play in our games, you’re going to be a real student,” NCAA president Myles Brand said.

Multiple baseball teams from all over Division I were under the 925 standard. Other sports teams will face scholarship cuts, too. Florida A&M and Prairie View A&M both have five sports that didn’t meet the NCAA standard.

But the NCAA also praised some teams for their academic performance. Several Big 12 and area schools had a perfect score, meaning that every athlete on the team is maintaining their eligibility and graduating on time.

The SMU men’s basketball, men’s swimming and women’s golf teams scored the maximum 1,000. The Texas women’s team and Texas Tech women’s basketball teams also were perfect.

We don't have a baseball team, so what happens to the baseball teams at UT, Tech, Baylor, etc., mean nothing on this board. (Not that I don't like to see UT get slapped once in a while, but aren't we going a little overkill on the Longhorn hunting here?)

I don't know about the baseball team, but I do know that the football team does a lot of excess traveling. Home and home series with OU would probably help the grades of the players of each team. This situation would really help their student athletes.

Would it be so bad to sacrifice players grades a little bit to have a team that is a top 10 team on a regular basis? It would be a lot better than the one winning season in almost 20 years program that we have.

McClown27 wrote: .... Home and home series with OU would probably help the grades of the players of each team....

That's insane. They spend no more time or energy or money on that travel game than they do on any other. Hell, they probably spend just as much on their home games, getting sequestered in some Austin hotel, etc.

Oh well.