NCAA Lifts OSU Practice Sanctions

The NCAA confirmed today that the Oklahoma State University football program Academic Progress Rate (APR) has been amended to a 930 and the school no longer faces any APR restrictions for the 2014-15 academic year. Earlier this summer, OSU athletic department officials discovered the recent graduation of student-athlete from the 1990s, which resulted in the addition of a delayed graduation point to push the Cowboys above the threshold for restrictions.

"Throughout this process the NCAA has been committed to having complete and accurate data," said Kevin Fite, OSU's senior associate athletic director for compliance. "We were provided a great deal of assistance in ensuring the information we were evaluated on accurately reflected our football team's academic performance, based on APR standards. When the additional point was discovered earlier this summer, the NCAA staff promptly re-evaluated our situation and added the point, which took us out of the penalty range."

When the NCAA released its APR data on May 14, OSU football had an average score of 929.41 over the past four years and an average score of 943.54 over the past two years. The Cowboys had been facing a two hour loss of countable athletic activity and the loss of a practice day after falling less than one point short of the NCAA's minimum APR requirement.

"We are very thankful for the cooperation of the NCAA staff during this process and we appreciate their focus on the accuracy of the data. We are also thankful that we received a speedy resolution," OSU Athletic Director Mike Holder said. "In the long term, this process will be a positive thing for our athletic department because nothing is more important to us than playing by the rules and graduating our student-athletes. This has caused us to re-examine how we monitor the APR and make some positive changes."

The APR is a team-based metric that accounts for the eligibility and retention of each student-athlete, each term.