NCAA Hits Bowling Green with APR Sanctions

It is time to take our medicine. Although we knew this was coming, the hammer has dropped, and it has been announced that BG has lost eight football scholarships--the largest penalty in the FBS.

This is based on our "APR" score. Via rivals.com, here is an explanation of APR.

Every Division I sports team calculates its APR each academic year based on the eligibility, retention and graduation of each student-athlete on scholarship. Teams with two consecutive years of underperformance are subject to scholarship losses or restrictions of practice time. A postseason ban applies after three years of poor performance, while a fourth year of underperformance can result in possible restricted Division I membership for an entire athletic department.

We first heard about this last November, when it was cited as a reason why Coach Brandon was let go, but we were told at the time that the results would be announced this Spring. It is spring. Here are the results.

As a Falcon fan, I am very disappointed, and I am heartened to know that the athletic director was, too. There is no reason for this. There is no choice to be made.

You should be able to have a winning football team in the MAC and retain/graduate players. If you can't, you should not have an athletic program.

One of the things we enjoy about the MAC is that (or so we thought) our players better represented the ideal of a student athlete than those in the BCS did. News like this takes us in the opposite direction...most BCS teams did not lose scholarships, in fact.

I know we could get into a whole conversation about how they have the resources to monitor their athletes more closely (or do their homework, whatever), but that misses the point. At a school like Bowling Green, we should be able to get a team that graduates players as well as most other colleges in the country.

Finally, I would advocate a coach being fired for this before I would for a 6-6 record.

Last year, AD Christopher said that BG knew the scores and had already taken the penalties, which means that Clawson steps in dealing with a smaller player base than most coaches would. That was probably the right thing to do, though. What would you do if you recruited players and that put you over your scholarship limit? Take away their scholarship?

Again, I understand that this is important to the university, the athletic department and the new coach. And, I don't want to paint all our players with the same brush. Many of our players were true student athletes, committed to excellence in everything they did, and we applaud them.

We just need more of them.