USC is a great university - athletically and academically. We should be held to a higher standard

This is why getting all worked-up over recruits is a waste of time. Every year there are some who never see the field due to grades, injuries and/or character issues.

Does anyone know who these at risk recruits are? I hope they are running backs and not linemen...

ECT - that's one of the reasons USC vs UCLA actually has to be taken with a grain of salt - you guys recruit kids UCLA would never touch. I'm sure we've all seen that article where USC is tied for last in academic requirements for athletes. That's probably, at this point, the major reason in my mind last year's win was so sweet. We don't send our kids to Fig Tech - no offense, but you know what I mean. I'm glad to see a Trojan pointing out the disconnect between the academics at USC, which are tremendous, and the athletics.

ReelBruin,

Your oh-so-transparent jealousy schtick is wearing thin. Just stop it already with your sanctimonious Bruin bull**it. USC's average SAT is higher that UCLA's for the 2007 class.

Every football program has a couple athletes that don't make it academically. The fact is if the kids can't make it the NCAA doesn't clear them and they don't play - see Troy Van Blarcom in the Rose Bowl. You just don't hear about UCLA's failures because no one cares about your football program...and you don't have a beat-writer than blogs every news item for the world to see.

Stop trying to make it sound like UCLA is Stanford and USC is Arizona. We're not that far apart admissions-wise.

"USC recruits athletes *insert name of school here* would never touch" - is the argument made by every school PC takes to class on the recruiting trail.

Talk about sour grapes.

Tyler - You are so wrong in so many ways it's stunning, even for a Trojan. And frankly, we did out recruit you for quite a few prospects, because we kicked your ass. See: Brian Price and Akeem Ayers.

The point your feeble Trojan mind couldn't grasp was that beating your asses with better students and citizens makes it all the sweeter.

USC and UCLA are completely opposite ends of the spectrum academically. I mean seriously, you think UCLA woulda let CW stay in school for 3 years? 2 and you are out, period, at a UC. You should try not to post without knowing facts. The facts were printed in a journal of all conferences, and UCLA was below Stanford, and USC was above WSU and OSU I believe, but that's it. Dude, accept the fact you have an NFL program with all the attendant arrests and problems, and the attendant victory/glory, and be happy about it.

Bruins have nothing to have sour grapes about: we beat you in Football, beat you twice in basketball, and genereally own the town until next we meet.

Genereally speaking, reelbruin is an idiot. You were lucky in football & hoops this year, genereally speaking. And genereally speaking if you are going to sight something you believe is fact, and reference that you saw it in a journal, then genereally speaking you should genereally provide the journal name & date of publication.

For example, US News & World Report ranks UCLA 26 & USC 27. Now genereally speaking, that is not much of a difference.

So you genereally don't own SH** in this town!

Handicap placards, Medlocks Dial a Ride and it is spelled generally reelstupid.

In memory of Tim Hardaway's post-hoops career, I'd like to say that I hate Ucla football (an oxymoron) and their fans.

You are really exposing your idiocy in your feeble attempt to call me out.

If you knew anything at all you would know that Chauncey did not stay on scholarship with the football team for the 3 years he's been at USC. He lost his scholarship after he was academically ineligible for the second straight year (OMG only 2 years under scholarship?!? That sounds a lot like your highfalutin boasts about UCLA-idiot).

He considered transferring out but then re-considered and decided to pay his own way for a year (at great personal cost) and focus on studying to get his grades back up so he could win his scholarship back.

He was not given a free ride for the last 3 years at USC and a little research would have told you as much. But of course research would mean that you actually care about anything that you write being factually accurate and we all know that's not the case.

Again stop being a jealous little bitch. While you're busy counting moral victories and regular season wins USC will continue to measure our success by National Championships and bowl wins. You know the games that matter...oh wait you don't know now do you?

Who hoo - you own the town. Congratulations. How come no one cares though and all I read about is how good USC will be next year in yet another run at a NC?

In 5 years no one but you will remember your little victory last year. Dorrell will be at San Diego St as a WR's coach and USC will be adding a wing onto Heritage Hall to store some additional crystal balls. But you'll always have 2006 to help you sleep at night. Good luck with that.

Hey - here's that article you asked for.

Recent Article Published by the Orlando Sentinel

NCAA is keeping score
Colleges face a tougher measuring stick in regard to their admission decisions

Alan Schmadtke | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted January 15, 2006

It was a time-honored tradition, an offseason coaching version of one-upmanship.

The game, unnamed by its participants, was, "How Low Can You Go?"

"You'd go to the convention and hear guys say, 'This kid's got no chance to qualify, but we'll get him in,' " Clemson assistant Brad Scott said. "Then you'd hear the next guy tell about the guys they were going to take."

Every year such scenes were repeated constantly behind closed doors after National Signing Day. College coaches would huddle with lists of signees from rival schools, making notes on which academically at-risk players had been signed. Cursing generally followed.

Sentiments were mixtures of disappointment, disbelief and jealousy.

Coaches then would show up at their conference's spring meetings to air grievances about leveling the playing field. Those days are almost over.

"We don't really hear that anymore," Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive said.

A new code -- APR -- is sweeping through college football.

At the NCAA Convention last week, university presidents received updated Academic Progress Rating numbers, the new, penalty-attached measuring stick for how well schools sign, keep and graduate athletes. Presidents are taking this seriously, and making sure everybody in their athletic department and conference is, too.

"There's going to be some peer pressure. This was part of the intent, the scarlet-letter approach," Western Athletic Conference Commissioner Karl Benson said. "Nobody wants to be embarrassed."

No two conferences were created equally and no two schools operate equally. Although the NCAA has its standards, at the end of the day each college's admissions director can say yes or no to whatever recruit he or she wants.

The only judgment needed is whether there's a realistic expectation that the athlete in question can handle that school's coursework and graduate.

"I've been at schools where there's one degree program that's a lot easier than all the rest, and whenever we had a player get in [academic] trouble, we'd put him in that program," said one longtime I-A assistant who asked to remain anonymous. "Some schools don't have programs like that, but a lot of them do. If you have the program and you know kids can get through it, that doesn't give you much heartburn when you recruit a kid who might be at-risk."

Some schools also are private, which means they operate with much less outside scrutiny.

Such judgment calls will provide some of the intrigue on National Signing Day. Some coaches will evaluate the competition with mixed emotions. Others won't look back.

"I'm sure we'll see players we wish we could have taken, but the way I look at it, they're somebody else's problem," UCF Coach George O'Leary said. "Some of those players can help you win, but a lot of times they help you lose."

Getting them in

Since 2005, the NCAA has required athletes take 14 "core" courses in four years of high school to get into a Division I college. That grade-point average in those courses is then placed on a sliding scale of SAT and ACT scores. The higher the GPA, the lower an athlete's test score could be.

The sliding scale was implemented in response to years of criticism that entrance requirements put too much emphasis on standardized test scores, which, critics argue, are racially and culturally biased. The sliding scale is supposed to place more emphasis on academic success in core courses and less on test-taking days.

In 2008, the academic sledding gets tougher. Athletes will have to pass 16 core courses, including an extra year of math.

The days of the partial qualifier -- a student who has a solid GPA but a sub-par test score, or vice versa -- are gone. The NCAA eliminated the middle-ground recruit as it re-engineered standards both for incoming freshmen and ongoing students.

Now recruits are either qualified on the sliding scale or they're not. All final determinations are made by the NCAA's Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse.

Where debate and discussion comes in is when schools decide to admit athletes the Clearinghouse declines to certify. Therein lies the competition.

In the Mid-American Conference, for instance, some Ohio schools assure in-state prep athletes that if they secure a high school degree, admission is all but automatic. But Miami (Ohio) and Ohio U. make no such guarantee.

Schools in other states make similar pledges. Florida schools used to do it, but that was long before the state's population exploded in the 1980s. Now Florida high school graduates are merely assured of a spot in a local junior college.

Schools can enroll academic non-qualifiers, but athletes must pay their own way to school for their freshmen year. Often they do so by receiving financial aid.

Another issue is junior-college recruiting. A minority of schools thrive on it. Others dabble. In many cases, admissions officers are more likely to approve junior-college prospects than high school recruits with troubling transcripts.

"Cal has a reputation of being like Harvard in terms of getting into school," said one Pac-10 assistant who asked not to be identified. "That's probably true for the every-day student. In football, they take a hard look at high school kids, but they're pretty active with the junior colleges. They're not as picky."

Since 2000, the Bears have signed 28 junior-college recruits.

UCF can relate. The Golden Knights have brought in 26 JC transfers since 2001. Even under O'Leary, who raised the academic bar for high school recruits above NCAA standards, UCF has added seven JC transfers. On the other hand, UCF coaches can tick off names of former high school prospects they couldn't touch but other schools in the MAC and Conference USA did.

Likewise, in 2002, Ron Zook's staff at Florida signed coveted middle linebacker Lance Mitchell of City College of San Francisco. But the SEC required a math class Mitchell didn't have, so he instead enrolled at Oklahoma. He started for two seasons with the Sooners and now plays for the Arizona Cardinals.

An ongoing discussion

Although coaches don't spend much time at conference meetings whining about rivals admitting inadmissible recruits, conference leaders make sure academics have a standing place on the agenda. League leaders don't negotiate standards, but they're always around.

When the WAC needed to supplement its roster of schools after a sweeping round of conference realignments in 2003, there wasn't much choice. Almost immediately after Rice, SMU and Tulsa announced they were leaving for a re-formed Conference USA, WAC leaders turned to Utah State and Idaho. Both schools had clamored for WAC membership.

How those schools' academics fit with the remaining WAC schools wasn't much of an issue for two reasons. First, Utah State and Idaho are state schools with like missions of the other WAC schools.

Second, there weren't any other choices among I-A schools.

There was an immediate plus, Benson said. When the new WAC was formed on July 1, 2005, "for the first time in 10 years we have institutions that from an academic standpoint look more similar to one another."

Around the country, conferences have made peace with where they are. Commissioners make few apologies, preferring program's win-loss records, graduation rates and APR numbers to speak for them.

All, however, are wary. The last thing they want is to go to a league meeting and see their presidents engaged in a fraternal game of "How Low Can You Go?"

Alan Schmadtke can be reached at aschmadtke@orlandosentinel.com.

How they rank

Posted January 15, 2006

ATLANTIC COAST
9 Wake Forest
8 Duke
7 Georgia Tech
6 Boston College
6 North Carolina
6 Virginia
4 Maryland
4 Florida State
4 Miami
2 Clemson
2 NC State
2 Virginia Tech

BIG EAST
7 Syracuse
6 Connecticut
6 Pittsburgh
4 Rutgers
2 Cincinnati
2 Louisville
2 USF
2 West Virginia

BIG TEN
9 Northwestern
7 Michigan
7 Penn State
6 Illinois
5 Indiana
5 Iowa
5 Purdue
5 Wisconsin
4 Minnesota
3 Michigan State
3 Ohio State

BIG 12
7 Texas
7 Missouri
5 Colorado
5 Oklahoma
5 Kansas
5 Nebraska
4 Baylor
4 Texas A&M
3 Iowa State
3 Texas Tech
2 Kansas State
2 Oklahoma State

CONFERENCE USA
10 Rice
8 SMU
8 Tulane
5 Tulsa
5 UCF
4 Houston
4 Memphis
3 Southern Miss
2 East Carolina
2 Marshall
2 UAB
2 UTEP

MID-AMERICAN
7 Buffalo
7 Miami (Ohio)
6 Ohio U.
5 Kent State
4 Ball State
3 Northern Illinois
3 Eastern Michigan
3 Central Michigan
3 Western Michigan
2 Akron
2 Bowling Green
2 Toledo

MOUNTAIN WEST
8 Air Force
6 San Diego State
5 TCU
4 Wyoming
3 UNLV
3 BYU
3 Colorado State
3 New Mexico

PACIFIC-10
9 Stanford
8 UCLA
6 Cal
5 Arizona
5 Oregon
5 Washington
3 Arizona State
3 Oregon State
3 Washington State
3 USC

SOUTHEASTERN
9 Vanderbilt
7 Georgia
5 Florida
5 Kentucky
3 Alabama
3 Arkansas
3 Auburn
3 LSU
3 Ole Miss
2 Mississippi State
2 South Carolina
2 Tennessee

SUN BELT
3 Louisiana-Lafayette
3 Louisiana-Monroe
2 Arkansas State
2 Florida Atlantic
2 Florida International
2 North Texas
2 Middle Tennessee
1 Troy

WESTERN ATHLETIC
4 Hawaii
4 Nevada
3 Fresno State
2 Boise State
2 Idaho
2 San Jose State
2 Louisiana Tech
1 New Mexico State
1 Utah State

INDEPENDENTS
9 Army
9 Navy
7 Notre Dame
2 Temple

And to SCS - there are so many felons and cheaters to list, I'm not even going to waste the time.

PS Hurts when I actually produce it, don't it.

Good luck at Fig Tech - I hear their profs are real tough!

The numbers dont lie ReelBruin. The rhetoric gets old. The team they produce day in and out, undoubtely is in the top tier. But to attempt to say the athletes (in relation to UCLA v. USC) are on the same academic platform is deplorable. Save it, I honestly hope these kids see the field somewhere; I believe the NCAA has allowed the "student-athlete" to be an oxymnoron and removed the decision making ability in these 18 yr olds. Cheating is accepted and considered winning unless caught. I wish the best to the athletes, but read the article and the numbers deflate the auroa.

Reel Bruin and your friend bruichamp,

You are both so full of it that it's almost not even worth my time to reply. Not only do you post an article that I cannot find anywhere on any website. But it clearly does not reflect the true information the NCAA releases in it's report.

According to the official NCAA website. (search for Graduation and Academic Rates in the NCAA library - each school gets its own PDF file breakdown of APR scores)

USC's APR in football is listed as a 929. Which puts them in the 40th to 50th percentile for all schools with football programs. UCLA's on the other hand is listed as 915 which puts UCLA football in the 30 to 40th percentile nationwide.

The NCAA also gives out recognition to the teams that fall into the top 10% APR-wise by sport. USC has 6 teams on that list:

Men's Tennis
Women's Cross Country
Women's Golf
Women's Indoor Track
Women's Soccer
Women's Water Polo

UCLA on the other hand - only 3:

Men's Cross Country
Men's Golf
Men's Tennis

Clearly the scores that you posted were not specific to football (according to the NCAA USC has UCLA beat there). I am done with you now. You quote an article no one can find I take my numbers from the NCAA website. Again do some real research - or do they not teach that at UCLA?

I read where the Ruins admit more of their free admits for sports than any other university in Calif.

I think free admits refer to kids who couldn't get in to the school.