Academic sanctions hit KU football, K-State basketball

Kansas’ football team will lose two scholarships and Kansas State’s men’s basketball team will lose one for the 2008-09 academic year because of subpar performances in the classroom.

The two schools were among 18 teams from Bowl Championship Series schools to be penalized after failing to reach minimum academic standards under the NCAA’s annual academic progress report released Tuesday.

Kansas, coming off the best season in school history, was one of only two BCS football programs — with Hawaii — to lose scholarships and one of 218 schools assessed punishments ranging from warning letters to reductions in practice times.

The Jayhawks, who beat Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl to cap a 12-1 season, scored a 919 on the Academic Progress Rates report, falling below the cutoff of 925.

Kansas administrators appealed the decision, based in part on the team’s projected 56 percent graduation rate over the four-year span of the report, but were denied by the NCAA.

“We have no doubt that our four-year average will be 925 or higher after the first of the four years of this report comes off,” said Jim Marchiony, Kansas associate athletic director of external affairs. “We are very happy with the direction of the football program right now. There’s just one year that’s dragging us down.”

That year is 2003-04, when the Jayhawks scored an APR of 899.

Kansas officials believe the high number of transfer students on the football team that year was a big reason for the low score. Now that coach Mark Mangino has put an emphasis on bringing in more freshman students, they believe the school will have higher graduation rates and APR scores.

“Coach Mangino has done a marvelous job of changing Kansas football, and we showed that on the field last year,” said Paul Buskirk, Kansas associate athletic director for academics.

Kansas State scored 880 on the APR report and was one of eight men’s basketball teams from BCS conferences to be penalized. The Wildcats also were one of four teams — with Purdue, Southern California and Tennessee — from the 2008 NCAA tournament to receive sanctions.

Kansas State officials blamed the score on the three coaching changes at the school during the four-year span of the report. They sent materials to the NCAA to see if an appeal might be possible, but ultimately decided against it.

“Three coaching changes in four years is, for the most part, catastrophic to a basketball program,” said Phil Hughes, Kansas State’s associate athletic director for student services. “We thought it had a tremendous impact on we submitted some of our information to the NCAA and they said ’that sounds pretty bad, but we’re standing pretty firm on how we look a the data.”

Kansas State’s program was filled with turmoil during the APR reporting period.

Jim Wooldridge was close to being fired after the 2003-04 season, making him essentially a lame-duck coach the following year. Bob Huggins put together one of the country’s best recruiting classes after arriving in 2006 but stunned the university by leaving after one season.

Now, Frank Martin appears to be pulling the pieces together. He led the Wildcats to their first NCAA tournament victory in 20 years and recently signed a five-year contract that will keep him at Kansas State through 2011-12.

“Some of that stability and a long-term view is huge,” Hughes said. “Frank understands this whole thing, how important it is. He gets the pressure of winning, but you have to be a steward of the university’s men’s basketball program.”