Looking into the graduation rates

As if the beatdown issued to Cal by Stanford last Saturday wasn't enough, this week brought the publishing of the most recent graduation statistics by the NCAA. As you can see from doing a simple search, Cal places dead last in the conference at 48%, and that number takes into account transfers and students who leave under good academic standing.

Recent graduation numbers released by the NCAA don't
exactly reflect well on Jeff Tedford and the Cal football program.

Of course, the simple reaction to this from a Cal fan would be, "This is the last straw with Tedford -- he can't produce on the field and now we find out he can't produce off it either!"

It's a reaction that is understandable, and not completely off the mark. However, it's necessary to look deeper into the numbers to get a full picture of what is going on.


For one, the recent stats are for football players who entered in 2005 and the previous three years. In other words, DeSean Jackson's class, Marshawn Lynch's class, Aaron Rodgers' class (though he was a transfer) and 2002. These classes represented the glory years of the Tedford era, with all the major triumphs coming by way of this batch of players, other than the 2009 upset in the Big Game. Placing 12th out of 12 isn't good, but if people weren't up in arms back when times were good, it's a bit hypocritical to blame Tedford now, when we all know that if we still had a Marshawn or a DeSean or an Aaron, nobody would care about grades anymore. Well, some people would, but it wouldn't be enough where people would be calling for Tedford to be gone.

Another interesting bit is that this is the first year where all four classes came under Jeff Tedford. It's a little too early to get a full picture of how the Tedford years will stack up academically -- let's put it this way, they aren't off to a good start, but we'll know more in four or five years of data (when, in all likelihood, Tedford will no longer be the head coach at Cal). Since the NCAA search goes back eight years, I searched all eight and found that, in general, Cal performs in the bottom fourth of the conference in terms of football graduation rates.

Here's how the numbers break:
2002-2005: 48%, 12th of 12
2001-2004: 54%, 9th of 10
2000-2003: 65%, 3rd of 10
1999-2002: 64%, 3rd of 10
1998-2001: 53%, 8th of 10
1997-2000: 52%, 9th of 10
1996-1999: 44%, 9th of 10
1995-1998: 47%, 9th of 10

As you can see, there is a weird blip in 2000-2003 and 1999-2002 where Cal performs quite well, relative to the rest of the conference. From 2000-2003, when the rate of 65% was the highest it had been, Jeff Tedford and Tom Holmoe have to share the credit, as each man had two recruiting classes in the data set. In 1999-2002, more credit must go to Holmoe, since 3/4 of the class was his, and it could be argued even more given that many of Tedford's original 2002 recruits were undoubtedly recruited in part by Holmoe. But Holmoe doesn't get off the hook quite so easy. He had data sets from two years prior that were quite poor, particularly the atrocious 44% mark between 1996-1999, where some of the blame could also be placed on Steve Mariucci.

In the end, my conclusion is that neither Jeff Tedford, Tom Holmoe, or any other Cal coach has made graduating players a real priority, as the numbers simply bear this out. However, it would be interesting to look more in depth at the classes that put Cal in the 64% and 65% range rather than the high 40s. This is strictly me thinking and not looking at any rosters, but I remember plenty of character guys who entered the program in 2001-2003, guys like Matt Giordano, Ryan Gutierrez, Lorenzo Alexander, and Burl Toler. Perhaps Cal just got lucky and plucked some genuine student-athletes in this era -- it also helps that those guys played key roles in some spirited wins.

Before we all get too depressed about sucking at sports and in the classroom, we should be mindful to look at other sports too. In general, Cal performs quite well as an athletics program. Of our 26 sports in the most recent data, 8 had graduation rates of 90% or above, including 100 percent rates for women's golf, women's water polo, and, my personal favorite since I'm a huge Rich Feller fan, Cal volleyball (in fact, I covered the team when some of the classes in this data set were playing). Eighteen of the 26 sports graduated 85 percent or more of their players. By comparison, campus wide 61% of students graduated in four years and 88% graduated in six years, so our sports teams are more or less where they should be in relation to the student body.

The funniest thing in looking at the graduation rates, is that the worst mark isn't football or men's basketball, but softball! I'm not sure if this is a mistake or if Diane Ninemire really was only graduating 45% of her players, but that's something to chew on as well.

In the end, the jury is still out on Tedford, because we don't have enough data, but of the data we have, all signs point to him continuing a trend of mediocre to poor academic performance from this football program in terms of graduating players. In the end, it doesn't matter if players get all Bs, if they don't come away with a degree. Having a degree means everything in this competitive job market, which is what we want all Cal graduates to be prepared for and be competitive in. He isn't the first coach to struggle with this at our school, and he won't be the last, but there is enough data for us to seriously question anyone who says, "Well, Tedford at least runs a clean program and cares about the student part of the student-athlete equation."