BREAKING: Patriot League Changes Academic Index

The Patriot League just issued the following statement:

Center Valley, Pa. - The Patriot League Council of Presidents endorsed and finalized a set of recommendations for revising the League's academic index to provide more consistency in the application of the index and internal equity among member institutions. The revisions will go in place for student-athletes that will enter Patriot League institutions in the fall of 2009.
"The Patriot League is committed to being the ideal home for outstanding student-athletes," said Bucknell University President Brian C. Mitchell, Chair of the Council of Presidents. "These recommendations provide a higher level of consistency and clarity that strengthens not only the League but also the programs of every one of our member institutions."
The revised index will also enhance admissions and athletic competitiveness of programs externally while maintaining the integrity of the League's founding principles. Included in the revisions are the implementation of a common League admissions floor, the creation of a system of admissions bands for football and basketball (men's and women's), and a methodology for including transfer student-athletes into the academic index calculation.

In a nutshell, what is going to be happening is that the Patriot League will be implementing an academic index that is similar to the way the academic index is calculated in the Ivy League - with a series of "bands" from a league-wide floor.

Initial impressions: The really, really interesting thing about the release isn't so much for football - where the Patriot League is simply following the Ivy League's methodology they've been using for some time - but for men's and women's basketball.

In the Ivy League currently there are no bands for men's and women's basketball: there, basketball is lumped together with "all other sports" to compute a department-wide "AI without football", and as long as the average is in line with the average of the incoming class, everything is considered fine.

It is in the world of basketball where the Patriot League is going where no league has gone before.

I will be looking to get more details on specifics and I will post some of them here when I find out more. Check in for updates.

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