The feared became reality yesterday when the NCAA released the annual APR report (PDF), handing the Buckeye basketball program a righteously-named "Contemporaneous Penalty". The term roughly translates to "the NBA likes your big dudes too much" and the score of 911 they earned for the preceding four academic years will result in a loss of two scholarships for the upcoming season.
Oh, snap!The APR is no easy thing to wrap your head around, but if I understand things correctly (and Unverified Hippieacity might well call into question our credibility if I'm wrong), the important bits are:
- Each scholarship player can earn two points per term: one for remaining academically eligible and one for staying in school.
- A team's multiyear APR score is calculated by taking the total points earned and then dividing it by the total possible points. And then multiplying that by 1,000. Because non-whole numbers are scary.
- 925 is the score you want to beat to avoid penalties. This roughly translates to a 50% graduation rate.
What hurt the Buckeyes were so-called "0-for-2" infractions out of Greg Oden in 2007 and Kosta Koufos last year. After Oden's early departure was part of a 909 in last year's report, the NCAA accepted an academic improvement plan submitted by Ohio State which included further tutor resources (including road trips) and the program avoided any type of penalties. This year's report included the Koufos whammy and and the resulting loss of scholarships.
From a recruiting perspective, the loss of the two scholarships guarantees the Buckeyes won't be getting that miracle commit from a prep point guard not named John Wall as the 11 remaining scholarships are all spoken for this season.
Next year looks painful as well considering the team will take a hit for Noopy Crater's transfer and lose one or two points depending on whether B.J. Mullens left Ohio State in good academic standing. Help is on the way, however, as the school will be moving from quarters to a semester-based system in time for 2012. Players working out for the draft won't have to worry about classes as the first semester will be in the books (and 50% of their eligible academic standings points instead of the 33% the completion of the first quarter currently provides).
While the 911 the basketball team put up ranks in the 20th-30th percentile within the sport, the football team checked in with a score of 968, good enough for the 80th-90th percentile nationally (also good enough for third in the Big Ten behind Penn State and Northwestern). And though men's basketball was the only sport penalized at Ohio State, the men's fencing and women's field hockey teams actually ranked lower within their respective sports (and both sports perform high on average at the national level). Any fencing insiders have the dish?
Finally. The Buckeyes have offered defensive end William Gholston, cousin of Jake Long destroyer and Buckeye legend Vernon. Rivals has the 6-6, 235 pound sack-machine 47th and his offer list reflects his talent and potential with the likes of Alabama, Florida, Florida State, LSU, Miami, Michigan, Oklahoma and Tennessee all working hard for his services.
It's spring again, so that can only mean Penn State football players are blazing up. Police raided an apartment the night of the school's spring game two weeks ago after receiving noise complaints and later found marijuana "in plain view" in the kitchen. No charges were filed, but the release of the apartment's address sent fans into a state of panic as the campus directory listed quarterback Daryll Clark as being a resident of the unit in question.
Still no charges, but the residents have been identified as a potential starter at guard and a three backups. Joe Pa says nothing to see here, move along, but we say give the kids a break. That fine stoner tradition might be a factor in the aforementioned conference-leading APR score.
Comments
Perhaps Matta doesn't need to recruit any more blue chip one and done centers until the 2012-2013 season.
hey, kids - want to go to school for free? AND spend a bunch of your time playing a GAME that ninety percent of america would give their left nut to play at your level JUST ONCE? all you have to do is NOT do drugs!
seriously, just DONT do drugs and you can go to school for free.
i dont see what is so difficult about this...
TBUN (That Brian Up North) is sorely in need of an occasional fisking. I'm a daily reader and (mostly) an admirer of MGoBlog - I've even posted a couple diaries there that were fairly well received and conducted a little bit of e-mail correspondence with the man himself. I'm one of those guys who tries to hate Michigan in a friendly and rational way, and to know my enemy as well as I possibly can.
The problem here - and it seems to be a recent one - is that he's the kind of blogger that is more than willing to flip the eff out on sportswriters and other bloggers when they make factual errors, or just assertions that don't necessarily comport to the known facts, but seems entirely unwilling to apply the same standards to himself.
As an example, in a recent Unverified Voracity Cook equated Michigan's shitty non-conference scheduling with Ohio State's, calling ours "USC and Texas" and various "in-state 1-AA teams". I wrote to him that this was unquestionably factually incorrect - we have home-and-homes scheduled with high-profile teams from BCS conferences for FOURTEEN CONSECUTIVE YEARS (I didn't use all caps in the e-mail) including USC and Texas; and that the ONLY 1-AA team we've played in the last ten years or for the foreseeable future is Youngstown State the last two seasons. I pointed out his penchant for insisting on accuracy in others and for ridiculing (as mentioned in the post) others' credibility when they have a take on a situation that doesn't jibe with his, and suggested that given the fine-toothed comb he applies to others' work he ought to correct the record - especially where the "in-state 1-AA programs" (emphasis on the plural) mistake is concerned. Without divulging the contents of private correspondence (and it should be said that he wasn't exactly rude), I can say that he doesn't see it as a factual matter but rather as a "case" that's arguable. Which, of course, is bullshit, no matter what fanbase you come from.
This is not to mention his recent ad hominem-riffic obsession with LiC, or his way, WAY over-the-top reaction to Sparty's hockey thuggery.
In any case, it would seem that the time has come for some sort of "MGoBlog Watch" feature in which Brian's writing is subjected to critical and factual analysis. The guy has been an invaluable resource for anyone who likes smart CFB blogging for a long time, but he's getting sloppy and waspish these days.
like i said, he's the perfect blogger for the michigan fanbase: smart, insightful, and completely convinced of his moral and factual superiority despite all evidence to the contrary.
THIS: http://mgoblog.com/content/ohi...
is my all time favorite mgoblog post. specifically the "QB" part of the preview. unintentionally, amazingly hilarious. and it also shows why anything brian writes should be taken with a grain of salt: his writing skills often mask some pretty bad analysis and dumb opinions (he thought troy smith was terrible until troy decided to stomp on michigan for the second year in a row).
as far as it pertains to the 11W spat, i guess what i'm saying is the same thing El Cab is saying: brian, get off your high horse. you aren't the arbiter of college football blogging justice, so stop acting like you are.
hahah oh man, the RB portion of the preview is pretty great too
So are the buckeyes going to lose scholarships in the future b/c of snoopy crater, and mullens? If so that sucks and Thad needs to keep some of these guys here. It would be nice if not everyone from the 2010 class would be one and done. I read the other day that there were over 100 underclassmen with their names in the NBA draft pool and only 60 or so picks, Turner needs to stop messing around and get his butt back on campus.
On the APR, there seems like a bigger issue at hand--this "finding" creates the perception that the Bucks run a basketball factory--but peel the onion and find that Oden and Koufos were simply NBA-ready. Who is to stand in the way of a guy leaving to make the money? After all, I too went to college basically to make more money. So it's pretty disingenuous of the NCAA to throw down these draconian standards. Maybe instead of punishing schools for recruiting really well (you know the NCAA eggheads who never touched a ball in their lives secretly love this), they should close the loop with the NBA and try to enact a rule like what exists for the NFL, where players must be 3 years removed from high school.
At the end of the day, this is just (cheap) suits rolling up to punish the successful, "leveling the playing field" in some sort of push toward Marxism in athleticism.
Oden was NBA ready. Koufos was NBDL ready.
Yes, bupX3, that preview is hilarious, but it's not entirely fair to club him with it - I remember plenty of Buckeye fans not really believing in Troy (and also plenty who thought he was a POS) at that point, and I don't remember ANY who thought Pittman was going to turn into the stud that he did. Plus it's a PREVIEW and can't be judged by the same objective standards as, say, a commentary on scheduling; so I'll give him a pass for that.
Not to get all pissy, but I'm not saying what you say I am - quite the contrary, in fact. I'm saying that Brian HAS been an excellent arbiter of what is bullshit and what is not in CFB itself and CFB writing/blogging for a while now, but that recently he's been getting pretty bullshitty himself - and I think that's a bad thing. I'd rather try to fisk and correct him back into excellence than crow over his creeping decrease in quality.
alright, then i guess we disagree on this. frankly, i think it's kind of ludicrous that anyone can act as the end all be all of college football or blogging in general, and i think far too often brian will pick a side and stick with it until the end of time, no matter what the actual circumstances are.
part of the reason i posted that preview is because, like i said, even up until the point of that year's michigan game, he was STILL insisting troy smith wasn't very good despite an entire season's worth of evidence saying otherwise.
additionally you can find tons of posts where he not-so-subtly implies the "dirtiness" of OSU's program, in one of those "well i'm not SAYING they're doing somehting buuutt" type of things. which in of itself is just a hackjob and lazy writing.
it's one thing to be involved in college football and drop all pretense of objectivity and spit venom all you want. at least that's honest, in a sense. what irritates me about mgoblog is that brian tries to present himself as a reasoned analyst of what's going on, and far far too often it's just him foaming at the mouth about something relatively minor
haha, so i clicked on that link to Brian's picture, and as soon as the word "Michigan" on his shirt loaded up, my computer decided to crash. Guess my computer's pretty smart.
So an organization that earns $614,000,000 a year......
http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/resources/file/ebca1c0e7492aa3/2007-08%20BUDGET%20(06-07%20Budget%20with%20moves).pdf?MOD=AJPERES
is penalizing schools that have players who leave early to enter their chosen job market.
Hippocracy at its best, I really wish the NCAA would just shred the illusion that most of these kids are "amateurs", and just start compensating them for the vast amount of dinero they earn for them. Forget about government involvement in a CFB playoff, they need to intervene in the whole thing.
Bup,
Hey man, didn't mean to come off too harsh about your comment on the Pryor interview, just don't want to be unnecesarily critical of a young man who needs time to adjust to being thrown into the national spotlight. No hard feelings, OH-
I O
and it's no problem, if i thought pryor read this site i'd never say something like that because we all know the enormous pressure he puts on himself to succeed.
College basketball needs to scrap the rule that these players need to play one year of college before entering the NBA. It is hurting both the NBA & college product.
The Lebron's of the world should go straight to the NBA & not have to pretend they are going to school, there's no need for this stupid rule. Either abolish it or make them stay for 3 years like football.
Exactly, iball. I hate this APR thing, it is such a joke. Either the BNBA has to make a rule where kids have to go to school for 3 years, like football, or you let them go right out of high school.
Like everyone says, you go to college to further & better yourself for your chosen career path. Why stop at athletes. If Microsoft offered me a guaranteed 6-figure salary in the middle of my sophmore year, you better deduct an academic scholorship from the IT department! What a joke....
that's not a college rule, that's an NBA rule. They don't have to play one year of college, just have to be a year removed from high school
*NBA, not BNBA. Damn IE8 erasing all my cookies (Anonymous).
Well, it makes sense to penalize schools for kids dropping out to transfer or just plain wash out of college.
It doesn't make any sense at all to me to penalize them for the kids leaving for a multi-million dollar contract.
I agree with a lot of what you said (and what bup-cubed said as well), but why call the guy TBUN when he's already been glossed as THUN?
bitching about the NCAA APR shenanigans kinda ties in with the cool Beanie/AZ Cardinals video in the side links (which is, as i mentioned, pretty cool. it was like my first day of work only 1000x better with more money)....
beanie mentions that after mini-camp he still has to return to school! i don't know if thats a personal preference or a favor to Jimmy T to help avoid the program getting spanked by the pinko commie bastards at the ncaa in the same way matta was. if its the latter, that is spectacularly awesome amount of non-sense that only a politician and a ncaa bureaucrat could let loose without feeling shame.
there is a lawsuit out now from former Nebraska QB Sam Keller on the same topic as well. i believe he is suing EA sports for using the likeness of college athletes without compensation.
the ncaa is a damn disgrace. sometimes problems are not hard to fix - make EA sports pay a licensing fee for team logos and players likeness. hold a percentage of it in a trust fund that matures for each player upon termination of participation in the sport.
oops, sorry about the first word.
OH gets his picture taken:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/...
Glad he is getting 'some' PT. I always liked O. Wasn't really all that great at anything, just liked the way he played the game....
[...] Didn’t really get touched on here all week, but OSU Basketball lost 2 scholies this week. ”The feared became reality yesterday when the NCAA released the annual APR report (PDF), handing the Buckeye basketball program a righteously-named “Contemporaneous Penalty”. The term roughly translates to “the NBA likes your big dudes too much” and the score of 911 they earned for the preceding four academic years will result in a loss of two scholarships for the upcoming season.” [Eleven Warriors] [...]