I wouldn’t shelve the finding below in the “Shocking Information,” file, but I would say that I am mildly surprised that athletes score so much worse on their SATs than their university peers. With the help of a the Atlanta-Journal Constitution study, let’s take a look at the SAT scored for football players vs. the student population at large for BCS bowl teams and some other traditional football schools.
(For your reference: the “Rank of Student vs. Football SAT Gap” as ‘1′ indicates the biggest gap between football player and regular student body SAT scores among 54 schools surveyed. Also Florida’s “50″ under “Rank of Football SAT,” indicates that out of 54 teams surveyed, Florida’s average football player SAT score ranks 50th among the 54 teams surveyed)
|
School |
Student SAT Avg.
|
Football SAT Avg. |
Rank of Football SAT |
Rank of Student vs. Football |
|
Florida |
1236 |
890 |
50 |
1 |
|
Oklahoma |
1158 |
920 |
42 |
20 |
|
Alabama |
1112 |
926 |
37 |
33 |
|
Utah |
No Data |
|
|
|
|
Penn St. |
No Data |
|
|
|
|
USC |
No Data |
|
|
|
|
Ohio St. |
1163 |
955 |
16 |
28 |
|
Cincinnati |
No Data |
|
|
|
|
Virginia Tech |
1200 |
951 |
19 |
13 |
|
Texas |
1230 |
948 |
20 |
8 |
|
Michigan |
1264 |
997 |
3 |
9 |
|
Florida St. |
1155 |
917 |
43 |
19 |
|
Oklahoma St. |
1103 |
878 |
53 |
22 |
|
Georgia |
1188 |
949 |
22 |
18 |
|
Tennessee |
1089 |
927 |
34 |
42 |
|
UCLA |
1275 |
930 |
33 |
2 |
After reading all the data, you have to be asking, “Why the hell should I care?” You might care because your school’s academic standards are so much different than your competitors that your coach might not be able to recruit the same athlete that you competitors can. You may care because your third coach in 10 years is about to be fired because your school can’t recruit the talent that it’s in-state neighbors can due to academic reasons. You might also care because there must be a way for the NCAA to level the playing field in terms of admission standards (eliminate the “partial qualifier”) among BCS conference teams. It seems that Miles Brand and Co. have found a way to regulate absolutely everything else except admission standards.
ORRRRR…
You may not care at all because this week your favorite team just admitted a 6′3″ 250 pound junior college linebacker (that your team sent to JC after failing to qualify two years ago) that couldn’t qualify to play ball at the University of Phoenix. I honestly respect this point of view because if the NCAA doesn’t care that wildly under qualified high school seniors are being admitted to some of America’s best colleges, why should you?
The Angry T
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