Richard Lapchick, the Director of TIDES and the primary author of the study "Keeping Score When It Counts: Assessing the 2008-09 Bowl-bound College Bowl Predictions Football Teams - Academic Performance Improves but Race Still Matters," noted that, "The new study shows additional progress and continues to underline the success of Myles Brand's academic reform package.""This year 91 percent (62 of the 68 schools), up from 88 percent in the 2007 report, had at least a 50 percent graduation rate for their football predictions teams; 82 percent of the teams received a score of more than 925 on the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate (APR) versus only 73 percent in the 2007 report College Bowl Predictions."
The NCAA College Bowl created the APR in 2004 as part of an academic reform package designed to more accurately measure student-athlete's academic success as well as improve graduation rates at member institutions.
Lapchick added that, "In spite of the good news, the study showed that the huge gap between white and African-American football college bowl predictions student - athletes remains a major issue; 19 teams or 28 percent of the bowl-bound schools graduated less than half of their African-American football student-athletes, while only Oklahoma graduated less than half of their white football student-athletes." The study was co-authored by Jessica Hanson and Ashley Turner.