Originally Posted by
MsgMills
Ok U of L fans...I told you I wasn't makin stuff up..Here's the PROOF, direct from the C-J....... Not just 1 player with a 0.00 gpa, but 6 player's total... Article ran in C-J on Aug. 27, 2001
Another reason why U of L will never get into a better Conference than the Big East or another Mid Major Conference when the Big East goes away.....
Cards' grades improving
Strong's first fix: boosting GPA
University of Louisville coach Charlie Strong vowed his football program would never again lose scholarships because of a low academic progress rate score.
The Cardinals lost three scholarships when the APR was released in June, but Strong pointed out to the sold-out crowd at the team's kickoff luncheon Tuesday that they were already progressing.
Strong, who was hired in December 2009, said that in the fall semester before his arrival 52 players on the team had below a 2.0 grade-point average, including "six players who didn't pass a class. Six players had 0.00."
He learned of the grade problems en route to his first team meeting with the Cards. It's what led to his now legendary rant. The players had planned to give Strong a standing ovation in what they thought would be an easy introduction.
"When I hit the door there was no standing ovation," he said. "They were going to hear what I had to say, and it wasn't very pretty. I told them that never again would we have below a 2.5 team semester GPA. That will never again happen."
The APR monitors a four-year span of retention and eligibility of players. The numbers released in June covered the fall semester in 2006 to the 2010 spring semester. U ofL's average in that span was 908, including an 869 for the 2009-10 academic year.
In the first semester after Strong took over, he said, the team had a 2.7 GPA overall, including 40 players who had above a 3.0 in the spring of 2010.
"In the fall a lot of times you slip because guys are playing football - they think they don't have to go to class," Strong said. "And I said to them again, 'We will never slip,' and in the (2010 fall) semester we had a 2.5 and we actually had 11 on the Dean's List....And this past spring our players had a 2.65, so the players are moving forward."
Strong pointed out that senior defensive end Greg Scruggs was one of the six players who had a 0.0 GPA in the fall 2009 semester. Then he added that Scruggs became more disciplined academically and will graduate in December.
"Show me a football team with good grades, and I'll show you a good football team," he said. "Show me a football team with bad grades, I'm going to show you a bad football team."
C.L. Brown can be reached at (502) 582-4044.
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