Academically, Syracuse University will transition from the Big East Conference to the Atlantic Coast Conference smoothly, but likely not as a top academic athletic program.

‘Yes, Syracuse fits right into the ACC’s sweet spot academically,’ Walter Harrison, chairman of the NCAA Committee on Academic Performance and also president of the University of Hartford, said in an email.

When SU joins the ACC in 2014, Harrison said he expects SU to fall academically in the ACC somewhere in the middle and ‘maybe a little closer to the top than the bottom.’

‘The ACC has a wide range of universities academically, ranging from two of the finest in the country — Duke and UNC — to others who are good but not on many people’s lists of truly outstanding American universities — Florida State and North Carolina State, as examples,’ Harrison said.

SU’s Academic Progress Rate for its two main sports, football and men’s basketball, are in the same range as schools in the ACC. APR is used to track academic performance of university athletic teams. A rate of 900 out of 1,000 is roughly equivalent to a 45 percent NCAA graduation success rate.

But the NCAA is also in the process of strengthening APR guidelines. In August, university presidents and chancellors met in Indianapolis for a two-day discussion on academics, integrity and financial sustainability on Division-I athletics. SU Chancellor Nancy Cantor attended.

The SU administration did not respond to requests for comment.

The NCAA Division-I Board of Directors approved moving the APR cut score from 900 to 930 at its August meeting, Harrison said. In October, Harrison’s committee will discuss how to implement the changes, including the rule that teams scoring below an APR of 930 will be ineligible for the NCAA Tournament.

SU men’s basketball has scored below a 930 for the past two years. In the 2008-09 academic year, the team earned an APR of 912— leaving the team with a penalty of two scholarship reductions.

When asked whether working toward a higher APR for the men’s basketball team was a goal for SU, Pete Moore, spokesman for the team, said both he and head coach Jim Boeheim did not have official comments.

Jake Crouthamel, athletic director at SU when APR was first introduced in the 2004-05 academic year, said because of SU’s reputation as an academic institution overall, students and student athletes are expected to be strong academically.

He said both coaches and administration members should keep track of how the school was doing academically.

‘We are called institutions of higher education,’ Crouthamel said. ‘We are not called institutions of football or basketball.’

SU’s APRs fall at the bottom of Big East rates. Football and men’s basketball teams received the lowest APRs of all SU teams for the 2009-10 academic year. SU’s football APR was six out of eight in the Big East and men’s basketball was 14 out of 16.

Based on the average multiyear APR and the most recent rates, SU will likely place similarly in the ACC, although it will also be among universities who traditionally earn higher APRs than those in the Big East.

The ACC average multiyear rate would have remained at about 959 if the men’s basketball teams at University of Pittsburgh and Syracuse, which scored a multiyear APR of 985 and 928, respectively, had been in the ACC for the 2009-10 season.

Duke University made the top of the list at 990 and Georgia Institute of Technology, which received a penalty for a low score, filled out the bottom at 915.

In football, Syracuse earned a ranking of 946 for the 2009-10 academic year. The highest APR in the Big East for football was Rutgers University, with a rate of 968, and the lowest was University of Louisville at 908. In the ACC, Duke University earned the highest score at 986, and the University of Maryland scored the lowest at 922.

dkmcbrid@syr.edu

Published on September 27, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Dara: dkmcbrid@syr.edu | @daramcbride