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The Academic Performance Tournament
When it comes to the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division I men’s basketball tournament, everyone is an expert.
Nearly every observer, from average fan to seasoned sports commentator, has his or her own tried-and-true method of filling out the 65-team bracket and predicting the national champion. Still, most televised predictions and entries to the average office pool are not even close. After all, it would not be March Madness without an upset or two.
Back by popular demand, Inside Higher Ed proudly presents its 4th Annual Academic Performance Tournament. As in years past, we have broken down the entire men’s tournament bracket and advanced those teams with the better performance in the classroom.
To select the winners, we used the NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate -- a nationally comparable score that gives points to teams whose athletes stay in good standing academically and stay enrolled from semester to semester. (Last year, the NCAA began using the scores to impose penalties on teams that underperform academically.) In instances where matched-up teams had the same Academic Progress Rate, we broke ties using the NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate -- which, unlike the federal graduation rate, considers transfers and subtracts athletes who leave college prior to graduation “as long as they would have been academically eligible to compete had they remained.”
Often, this method selects some unlikely teams as national champions. For example, the first two years we played out such a tournament, the winners were both from the Patriot League -- Bucknell University and the College of Holy Cross. In the actual tournament, Bucknell lost in the second round in 2006, and Holy Cross lost in the first round in 2007. Last year, Davidson College won our Academic Performance Tournament. Though the Wildcats did not win the actual tournament last year, they fared better than any of our past champions. Davidson lost in the Elite Eight, after an unlikely run.
This year, our Academic Performance Tournament has its fair share of upsets. No. 16 East Tennessee St. beats No. 1 Pittsburgh, and No. 15 Morgan St. beats No. 2 Oklahoma in the first round. Both of these Cinderella teams advance to our Sweet 16. At the end of the day, however, only one team can be champion. This year, our winner is actually quite plausible.
Click the image below to reveal the entire bracket.
