Approved; Southern Athletics cleared by NCAA

“A sampling of certification forms submitted recently appears to be correct,” decreed the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Southern University athletics for the first time in a long time have cleared the student-athletes to the NCAA’s liking.
“The institution was reminded that it has additional required actions to complete during the probationary status,” the NCAA added.
The submission of the forms is normally a routine matter, but Southern’s submission of unusable data in the past led to an 18-month NCAA postseason ban for all Jaguars programs.
The punishment was set when the Southern University Athletic Department sent unusable data from inaccurate student-athlete Academic Progress Rates to the NCAA in December 2013 under former Athletic Director, William Broussard. However, unusable data was produced before his time.
The academic ban was lifted for all Jaguar sports on May 15.
Southern knows trials and tribulations set upon by rulings first hand.
Elated by the news of the ban-lift, interim Athletic Director and head men’s basketball coach, Roman Banks said, “The students and coaches are very proud of the actions that transpired here and wish to show that Southern can compete in the future.”
Since then Southern has appeared to attempt to further develop the habit of verifying the veracity of paperwork, in order to achieve approval from the NCAA.
As a result of Southern’s probationary status, the NCAA had to approve the submission before the university could proceed with supplying Academic Performance Program information by Sept. 28, a deadline that must be met by all NCAA members. That information will be used to evaluate the student-athletes’ Academic Progress Rates’ for the 2014-15 academic year in all 15 Jaguars athletics programs.
The approval of the forms only means that the new system of recording and submitting data adheres to NCAA requirements.
The APR data will be evaluated on a program-by-program basis and the NCAA will issue its annual updated numbers on all schools next spring.
Banks credited, “ It was a broad-based initiative and the collaborative efforts of the Academic Task Force for developing a sustainable process for providing accurate and usable certification data to be submitted.”
Banks added, “This process ensures that the SU Athletic Department is able to progress forward with submitting its Academic Performance Program information by the Sept. 28 deadline. The successful completion of this task would not have been possible if it were not for the tireless efforts of many University employees and consultants.”
SU athletics will now focus on supplying the NCAA with the data needed to calculate the APR scores for the department’s 15 Division I athletic programs in the Southwestern Athletic Conference.
Implemented in 2003 as part of an ambitious academic reform effort in Division I, the Academic Progress Rate (APR) holds institutions accountable for the academic progress of their student-athletes through a team-based metric that accounts for the eligibility and retention of each student-athlete for each academic term. This strategy was to allow student-athletes to graduate on time and increase the retention rate at universities.