.png)
Mike Stoops has raised more than the football team's victory total.
By Anthony Gimino
August 5, 2010
Arizona football coach Mike Stoops has made steady progress in his six seasons as head coach, and we’re not just talking about the win-loss record.
Stoops’ conference victory totals have gone like this: two, two, four, four, five, six. Keep in mind that Arizona won a total of four Pac-10 games during the three lost years of the John Mackovic era.
Not only did Stoops inherit a mess on the field, he inherited a mess off the field, with discipline and work ethic problems that extended into the classroom.
It is here where we see more sure-footed improvement.
The football team’s Academic Progress Rate has improved every year since Stoops was hired after the 2003 season. The team’s APR for the 2003-04 school year was 870. The NCAA uses 925 as a cutline for potential punishment, estimating that the 925 level equates to about a 50 percent graduation rate.
Since then, this is how the Stoops-led program has done:
2004-05: 897
2005-06: 901
2006-07: 938
2007-08: 958
2008-09: 961
The Arizona football team was underperforming the national average by 56 points in the 2003-04 school year. Now, in the latest data, it is outperforming the national average by 17 points.
You can find the data about Stoops at the head coaches APR database released Thursday by the NCAA. This is a new tool that is helpful in tracking coaches across multiple schools.
