The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga athletic department got some good and bad news today following the release of the latest NCAA Academic Progress Rate data.

The Mocs football and wrestling programs made academic progress, but each will continue to be punished for poor academic performances in the past.

Thanks to improved work in the classroom and greater scholarship-player retention, the football and wrestling teams improved their APR more than 100 points during 2006-07 and are not subject to any new contemporaneous penalties. However, they were both given historical penalties for being repeat offenders, with multi-year APRs of 883 (wrestling) and 855 (football): the UTC football team was docked nearly three scholarships and lost two hours of practice time per week, limiting it to 18, while the wrestling team lost another partial scholarship.

The football team was penalized 6.3 scholarships (10 percent of the Football Championship Subdivision’s maximum of 63 per team) each of the past two years because its APR number was well below the 925 benchmark — the equivalent of an approximately 60 percent graduation success rate, according to the NCAA.

The wrestling team was also well below 925 last year and was penalized a partial scholarship. Teams with APRs below 925 are subject to a possible loss of scholarships and practice time and even a ban on postseason competition.

The only other UTC team with an APR below the benchmark was women’s tennis, which came in at 896. However, the team did not receive any penalties.

This is the fourth year of the APR, which began with the 2003-04 academic year. A team’s APR score is comprised of a mathematical formula that gives two points per semester for every scholarship athlete on a roster — one for retention and one for eligibility.

For complete details, see Wednesday’s Chattanooga Times Free Press Sports section.

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