The stereotype of the dumb jock – the ones only on campus to entertain the “real” students while skating through jock-classes – is a difficult icon to kill. The NCAA has been implementing steps to ensure student-athletes graduate at least close to the same rate as the rest of the student body.

The NCAA started the Academic Progress Report in 2002 to collect data and report on how schools are doing with student-athlete retention and eligibility.

Myles Brand, who became president of the NCAA in 2002, has been an advocate of the APR since the beginning.

“We want to change the behaviors of the teams and the institutions and the athletic programs so we’re all headed toward the success of student-athletes on the field and in the classroom,” Brand said.

At Sacramento State, the Student-Athlete Resource Center is tasked with providing athletes with support to reach their academic goals and ensure the university’s athletics meet the NCAA standards.

Paul Edwards, director of the Student-Athletic Resource Center, said his first step was meeting with all of coaches to educate them on APR “so they could better understand how to maneuver through it.”

Each scholarship athlete gets one point for retaining eligibility and one point for returning to school the next year. If a student-athlete leaves school or loses eligibility, the school loses the points. Bonus points can be added for athletes who return to school to complete their graduation requirements. The points are calculated on a four-year rolling average.

The earned points are divided by the total possible points, resulting in a percentage number, which is converted into the APR score. A perfect APR score is 1,000. Schools can be penalized if their programs drop below the 925 threshold.

“Theoretically if your programs are at a 925 or better you will graduate your students at a rate of 50 percent or higher,” said Bill Macriss, Sac State deputy director of athletics. “That’s the theory behind the 925 APR number.”

The results for the 2007-08 season will be reported May 6. For now, the NCAA has released the recognition awards for programs that are in the top 10 percent for the nation. For the second year in a row, the Sacramento State women’s basketball team was recognized for its accomplishments.

“This is a tremendous honor for our women’s basketball program, and demonstrates our efforts to achieve both academic and athletic excellence,” said Terry Wanless, Sac State director of athletics.

“We have succeeded as a program because coach (Dan) Muscatell has always stressed to the team that academics are more important than anything else they do at school,” said Jamie Craighead, women’s basketball associate head coach. “The athletic department continues to support our program, and we don’t envision any change with the coaching change.”

On April 20, Muscatell announced he had accepted an assistant coaching job with the University of Oregon and was stepping down as coach.

Last year’s report, which covered the 2006-07 season, resulted in Sac State being penalized in seven sports, the most athletic programs of any Division I school. Men’s baseball, basketball, football, golf, indoor and outdoor track and women’s tennis were all penalized. Men’s golf and outdoor track did not lose scholarships, but were publicly warned about having low APRs for multiple years. The penalty for the university was a loss of 3.35 total scholarships that could’ve brought in more athletes to Sac State.

The athletic department, with assistance from the Student-Athletics Resource Center, has taken steps to attempt to improve on the university’s APR.

“If we are guilty of anything, we came to the party a little later, but we’ve come in doing some really good things,” Edwards said. “We’ve been able to really nail down where our problems were. We did our research, our statistical analysis, a little later than we probably should have.”

During the first few years of the APR, California State University schools were getting penalized at a considerably higher rate than the rest of the country. The athletic director’s office worked with university administration, faculty and coaches to develop the Academic Progress Plan.

Among other changes, the Student-Athlete Resource Center has increased its staffing. It has have gone from one adviser to three full-time advisers and one life skills advisor. One advisor, Bob Shook, is dedicated entirely to the football program.

“(APR) has changed the way our coaches are looking at a student coming in as a recruit,” Macriss said. “We are recruiting better students, but we are also helping them be better prepared for once they walk in the door. And we have set rules requiring it.”

Some of the rules for student-athletes in attendance at Sac State include number of units required, mandatory study halls for students who have a grade point average below a specific threshold, informing professors of classes they will miss because of team travel and professors signing off after each class to ensure the athletes aren’t missing classes.

Running back coach Aaron Ingram came to Sac State from Foothill Community College with head coach Marshall Sperbeck two seasons ago. He was not familiar with APR coming in.

“The definition of a coach has changed since APR,” he said. “You’d think the kids would just show up in shorts and tennis shoes and you could coach football and do some X’s and O’s. Now you are a lot more academic councilor, academic scheduler, teaching time management, teaching task management.”

The APR is often confusing because the report comes out so long after the data. The report coming out May 6 is for the 2007-08 season, almost a full year after the close of that academic year. As Sperbeck and his staff prepare for their third football season at Sac State, the numbers for their first season are being released.

Coming from a community college program, Sperbeck and his staff are new to dealing with APR and NCAA eligibility issues.

“I’ve gotten better as a head coach as I’ve learned the rules and the game of APR,” Sperbeck said. “You have to start profiling a little bit for what fits your model as a student-athlete, what you want here at Sac State.”

Ingram said they now know it is about more than just academics, but it is about teaching the athletes how to behave at school.

“Our athletes are sitting in the first two rows of class, hats off. We teach them everything from the ground up,” he said.

The era of the scholar athlete is in the past, but so is the era of the dumb jock. Now athletes are required to be just as involved in academics as any other group on campus.

“As an athletics program, our success…will get judged on the field of play,” Macriss said. “But if kids are graduating, and we are helping them to move forward and getting them prepared for life, we are doing the most important thing we could be doing. And that is why (APR) is great.”

Dan King can be reached at [email protected]