Who says football players are dumb jocks?
The Spring quarter marked the second consecutive quarter for Coach Urban Meyer’s program to increase its team GPA. The Ohio State football team GPA of 2.88 is the highest its been in 10 quarters. The players on the current roster who will be on the field this fall had a combined GPA of 2.95 this spring. The last Ohio State team to top that average heading into a fall camp was the 2007 team that posted a 3.02 GPA after the summer quarter.
Four players had perfect 4.0 GPAs, 20 others had at least a 3.5 and 48 earned at least a 3.0. The 48 players with 3.0s or above is the second highest in the last 10 quarters dating to autumn 2009.
The time periods in which we were good academically and good athletically draw a correlation between the two.
Not bad at all!
I wonder what the average GPA is for the "normal" student body. I'm guessing the football team's aggregate 2.88 GPA is a bit higher than the average for rest of the students. Part of this is due to all the attention and pressure being applied to athletes and their classroom performance (e.g., tutors and mentors), but you have to give credit where credit is due.
With Meyer's large incentives for his team's academic performance I totally expect this to continue into the future. He'll always be criticized for arrests, but his players perform well in the classroom and show increased maturity under his so-called "circle of trust" system and I think he deserves a ton of credit for his coaching methods.
Was it Hankins that detailed Meyer's progress charts for the team? That was a terrific article.