Talk about bad news for the football program after a really great set of spring practices.
After the spring game on Friday, the athletic department sent out an email at 9 a.m. Saturday announcing that athletic director Rob Spear and football coach Paul Petrino were going to hold a press conference.
Before going into the press conference, members of the media had no clue what was going to be announced until another email was sent out shortly before the press conference began.
The email announced the team would not be eligible to participate in the postseason — a bowl ban. The reason behind this was that the team’s Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores had dipped below the required number.
For those who don’t know how the APR system works, it works like this. The system is a series of points. All athletes who earn athletically related financial aid have a chance to score two points towards the APR score for the team.
One point is a retention point earned for staying in school. The other is an eligibility point for remaining academically eligible. All of the points are added up and then divided by the total points that a team can earn. After that, the total is multiplied by 1,000.
If a program’s APR for a four-year average is under 930, they are subject to penalties including losing scholarships — up to 10 percent of a sport’s scholarships for the year. That penalty can be immediately enforced by the NCAA.
Any average under 900 can be subject to stricter penalties. This includes the penalties that the football team was just handed, including a loss of practice time and loss of postseason competition. The most severe penalty is the NCAA restricting membership status of the school and that penalizes the entire athletic department. With that, Idaho can lose its Division I status.
Luckily, that penalty was not handed out.
The penalties that have been handed out though are still a huge blow to the team. This team had postseason aspirations this season with the Sun Belt Conference schedule that they were handed. Now, those are gone for the season. They don’t have a bowl game to play towards.
When asked, Spear said they tried to appeal the ruling, but with how the numbers had decreased from 2009-2012, they lost the appeal.
Many of the years that were part of the four-year average came during the Robb Akey era at Idaho. This is just another mess that Petrino and the athletic department have to clean up from his tenure here.
A little shining light that comes from this news is that, so far, none of the seniors have decided to transfer. With the current rules, any senior that has an up-to-standard APR score would be able to transfer and play immediately at the school they transfer to.
Petrino said that he talked with the seniors, including individual meetings with senior leaders Maxx Forde, Dezmon Epps and Mike Marboe and he said “they’re all Vandals.”
While it may not be fair to them that they are going to miss the postseason, they can all help improve the APR score for future teams to compete in bowl games and postseason play.
Petrino knew coming into the job that academics were going to have to improve and he has helped implement a good academic plan. He expects the team APR to be at 960 for 2013.
Which again demonstrates that Petrino might just be the right guy for the job.
Rick Clark can be reached at [email protected]