Monday, August 06, 2007
How does Cal's football team rank academically?
Lots and lots of discussion on the Stanford bulletin board about the academic performance of Cal's football team. Most of it was initiated by Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh's comments that Michigan directs its football players to easy majors and also does a poor job of graduating African-American players. Cal fans felt the need to defend their school. If Harbaugh is critiquing one public university, he could just as easily be saying the same thing to recruits about other schools like Cal.
Much of the defense of Cal's academic honor has been based on the assessment that the graduation rate of the players has increased under their coach Jeff Tedford. Cal fans have also pointed out how highly the university is rated across the board as a premier academic institution, clearly the 2nd best in the Pac 10 behind Stanford.
So I did a little research and posted this on the Bootboard:
I think the debate should not so much be the relative academic rankings of the various Pac 10 schools. Rather, it should be the academic performance of the football players. It is pretty well-chronicled that at most if not all schools football players find it hard to participate in the mainstream academic activities. At many schools (see the Harbaugh Michigan comments thread) football players are encouraged to pursue a relatively less demanding academic path. So let's see how the football players compare to a fixed standard (graduation) and relative to their peers (academic all-conference honors is about the only verifiable yardstick available here).The relative graduation numbers have been discussed at length elsewhere. So the question now is how do Cal players measure against their peers academically? To what extent are they recognized as academic all-conference compared to other Pac 10 schools?
During the time that Tedford has been coach (2002-2006), here are the 1st and 2nd team Academic All Pac 10 totals by school (assuming I counted accurately):
By that measure, Cal's football program is 2nd best in the conference. However, I would highlight a negative trend - the number of Cal academic all conference players declined every year in Tedford's coaching stint until last year when it barely inched up - from 11 in 2002 to 10, 9, 4 then up to 5 in 2006. Cal was eclipsed by ASU over the last three years.
The revelation of this analysis to me is the relatively strong performance from the ASU players and the miserable representation of the USC and UCLA players.
Much of the defense of Cal's academic honor has been based on the assessment that the graduation rate of the players has increased under their coach Jeff Tedford. Cal fans have also pointed out how highly the university is rated across the board as a premier academic institution, clearly the 2nd best in the Pac 10 behind Stanford.
So I did a little research and posted this on the Bootboard:
I think the debate should not so much be the relative academic rankings of the various Pac 10 schools. Rather, it should be the academic performance of the football players. It is pretty well-chronicled that at most if not all schools football players find it hard to participate in the mainstream academic activities. At many schools (see the Harbaugh Michigan comments thread) football players are encouraged to pursue a relatively less demanding academic path. So let's see how the football players compare to a fixed standard (graduation) and relative to their peers (academic all-conference honors is about the only verifiable yardstick available here).The relative graduation numbers have been discussed at length elsewhere. So the question now is how do Cal players measure against their peers academically? To what extent are they recognized as academic all-conference compared to other Pac 10 schools?
During the time that Tedford has been coach (2002-2006), here are the 1st and 2nd team Academic All Pac 10 totals by school (assuming I counted accurately):
- Stanford - 63
- Cal - 39
- Arizona State - 26
- Oregon State - 21
- Washington State - 19
- Washington - 18
- Oregon - 15
- UCLA - 10
- USC - 9
- Arizona - 9
By that measure, Cal's football program is 2nd best in the conference. However, I would highlight a negative trend - the number of Cal academic all conference players declined every year in Tedford's coaching stint until last year when it barely inched up - from 11 in 2002 to 10, 9, 4 then up to 5 in 2006. Cal was eclipsed by ASU over the last three years.
The revelation of this analysis to me is the relatively strong performance from the ASU players and the miserable representation of the USC and UCLA players.
