SPOKANE — Washington State University will lose eight football scholarships for failing to satisfy the latest NCAA academic progress standards, school officials said Tuesday.
Two scholarships apply to this academic year and the other six are factored into the 2008 recruiting class, athletic director Jim Sterk said.
“The NCAA has an appeals process, but at this point we felt it was best to accept our penalties and move the football program forward,” Sterk said.
The NCAA on Tuesday released a nationwide report that recommended possible scholarship losses at nearly 150 college teams in all sports. WSU’s football program was the only sport among the four Division I programs in the state — including Washington, Eastern Washington and Gonzaga — to face potential scholarship losses.
The Cougars are the only Pacific-10 school to lose football scholarships.
The 2007 Academic Progress Rate report showed that t13 of Washington State’s 17 sports programs are in compliance with NCAA guidelines. Men’s basketball, baseball and volleyball are not, but, unlike football, do not face scholarship losses.
The report contains data for the previous four academic years and assigns each sport a corresponding score.
The APR awards two points each term to athletes who meet eligibility standards and remain with the institution. A team’s APR is the total points earned by the team divided by the total points possible.
The football team recorded a four-year average score of 916, missing the 925 (out of 1,000) NCAA benchmark. Teams falling below 925, which the NCAA said equates to a graduation rate of 60 percent, are subject to scholarship penalties.
In the case of football, the 2006-07 single-year score of 874 dropped the four-year average under 925. The previous three years produced APR scores of 916 (2003-04), 955 (2004-05) and 921 (2005-06).
The penalties mean that the Cougars are restricted to 22 new scholarships this year. Combined with continuing scholarships from previous years, they will have a total of 77 in 2008-09 — eight fewer than the 85 normally allowed to a top division football program.