NCAA: Male Athletes, Dumb. Cross Country Runners, Nerds

The NCAA handed out penalties yesterday for over 200 sports teams across the nation. The penalties were in response to the poor "Academic Progree Rates" (APR) of the teams and included the snatching away of precious scholarships and other "sanctions," whatever that means.

The most notable, if not suprising in the least, part of the report was how many men's teams were fingered with low APR's versus the low number of women's teams.

Of course, most of us former "athletes" have experienced the bus ride home from competitions where the men's team, and the one or two "cool" members of the women's team, are playing "would you rather..." and explaining to innocent teammates what a "donkey punch" is, while the rest of the women's team studies their accounting textbooks. So, this isn't a suprise, just interesting to see it listed on paper.


The other noteable, if once again not suprising, bit of information from the report is that cross country teams are by and large overrun by nerds who get good grades. Cross Country teams, while having the second highest number of total teams in the NCAA (300 to basketball's 337), has only 5 penalized teams (compared to basketball's 53 and football's [I can't find the infinity symbol on my keyboard]).

Just for fun, you can find your favorite college team's stats here.

Kent State men's XC team(my former team) scored a 988 APR and is proudly sitting between the 80th and 90th percentile among all NCAA teams and Fordham's XC team(Jeremy's alma mater) scored a 994 and is between the 90th and 100th percentile.

Therefore, Jeremy is a certified L7 dweebey while I'm an intelligent, but not intimidatingly so, poet-philosopher who can enjoy both a raucous night out on the town as well as a quiet romantic evening with a special lady friend. I always assumed such personalities for Jeremy and I, but it's just nice to see it all out on official documents, ya know?