Black major college football players are graduating at rates significantly lower than their white peers and lower than male full-time college students in general, according to the 2012 Adjusted Graduation Gap Report: NCAA Division I Football, released today by the College Sport Research Institute.
The racial breakdown, the first in the AGG Report's three-year history, indicates that the graduation percentage for black football players competing at college football's highest level is 24 points lower than the percentage for male full-time students in general. That gap is three times as large as the AGG of white FBS football players. The AGG for black FCS players, meanwhile, is twice as large as that of their white football-playing peers.
The calculated AGGs range from a positive 10 for black players and a positive seven for white players in the FCS Southwestern Athletic Conference (meaning football players of both races are graduating at rates higher than their male full-time cohorts) to a negative 34 for black players and a negative 17 for white players in the FBS Pac-12 Conference.
The three-year FCS AGG is a negative nine, while the three-year FBS AGG is a negative 19. The 2012 mean FBS AGG of negative 17 is the lowest in the three years, down from last year's high of negative 20.
While showing some improvement, this year's numbers nonetheless reinforce what CSRI director and AGG Report coauthor Richard Southall has been witnessing all along. "We now have three years of data that show NCAA D-I football players - especially FBS players - do not graduate at rates comparable to full-time male college students at most NCAA Division I universities," Southall says.
