Lehigh Football Nation

The NCAA released academic progress rate information on all their member schools, and - here's a shocker - Lehigh and the Patriot League in general had stellar APR numbers . Nine Mountain Hawk teams had perfect scores of 1000 - meaning, every single athlete on those teams carried more than a 2.7 GPA and made progress towards graduation. One of those teams was the men's basketball team, including a certain player named G C.J. McCollum who will be hearing his name called in the NBA Draft later this month. The full data, for Lehigh and Patriot League football and basketball, is included below.  (Including incoming members Boston University and Loyola University (MD).

Few analogies are as overwrought as the consistent characterization of football being a "war".  I do it; Pat Forde does it; everybody does it. But it seems strangely appropriate to use this as my "Sunday Word" this weekend. With Democrats and Republicans making every single tiny appointment and legislative action as an epic struggle between good and evil, anything on the political front these days feels dangerous - whether it means driving the American economy into a ditch, or not. So it goes, too, with all the big issues on the docket in the NCAA this past week. If you thought Congress was the only body that had walkouts, no-shows, financial straitjackets and throwing the least well off under the bus, you should see the "war" happening in the halls of the NCAA. (more)

It's never news that Patriot League teams receive awards about their Academic Progress Rate from the NCAA. Since instituting the measure in 2005 to track athletes' progress in reaching graduation, Patriot League schools have consistently, alongside the Ivy League, been honored for the number of teams that have scored a 977 or above. (Broadly, it means that 97.7% of the the team has made academic progress towards their degree.) That Patriot League schools are consistently at the top or near the top of their institutional peers in APR rates is not news. Buried in the numbers, however, are two items that should not be ignored - a subtle change that has robbed the Patriot League of some national recognition, and a case for football scholarships that you might have missed. (more)

It shouldn't be much of a news item, really, but as the NCAA released their Academic Progress Rate numbers this year it was no surprise to see Patriot League schools all over the honor list . Gushes the press release, "For the fifth consecutive year, Yale University had the most teams (24) recognized, followed by Dartmouth College (22) and the University of Pennsylvania (20). By conference, the Ivy Group had the most number of teams honored (135), followed by the Patriot League (90) and the Big East Conference (70). " Today, the NCAA released the full data for their APR numbers; not only the numbers from last year, but the four-year averages which the awards are based. Let's take a moment to look at the numbers for football and men's basketball for the Patriot League - and then compare them to the rest of Division I athletics. (more)