The NCAA released the latest tranche of data pertaining to the graduation rates of the country's student-athletes, known as Academic Progress Rate, or APR. On this Day o' the Draft, a day in which we all prostrate ourselves before the altar of mercantilism and money, I felt it somehow appropriate to look at how the Irish did this year, insofar as academics are concerned. I think you might be surprised. "This year" is, of course, a complicated term, when speaking of a program's APR. Earlier ...
GSR
How Do You Spell Success? N-F-L? G-S-R? A-P-R?
The 2014 NFL Draft is in the books, and with it comes a reflection on success. For the eight Irish players who were drafted, they're basking in some form of success. But what I want to examine in today's piece is whether or not there is a difference in the success enjoyed by, say, Prince Shembo, and the success enjoyed by Troy Niklas? I also want to examine whether, or not, with this draft class, we can say that Coach Brian Kelly's regime has been a success? Is the program successful? Let's ...
Friday Roundup: The “run cmd” Edition
Well, Cam McDaniel has become quite the internet sensation this week. I feel though we are only focusing on one aspect of Cam McDaniel right now. There is clearly so much more that this Texas native delivers. Back when we detailed Cam's amazing run through a backwards gauntlet, one loyal reader had the ingenious idea of nicknaming Cam "run cmd". Being a computer nerd myself, I've run with this. With that in mind, let's take a journey through some of Cam's greatest hits this season via run cmd ...
APR and GSR: What Do They Mean, Really?
One of the drums we beat incessantly here at HLS is our unabashed adoration of Brian Kelly and our unwavering commitment to him is our commitment to extolling the performance of Notre Dame athletes off the field. In today's post, I want to do two things: 1.) explain the difference between Graduation Success Rate (GSR) and Academic Performance Rate (APR); and 2.) compare Notre Dame's GSR and APR to that of Alabama, Oregon, and tOSU. I found the results interesting. The NCAA uses three metrics ...
NCAA 2013 Data Released!
It's been a hot summer so far in the Big Easy. The lazy whirl of the ceiling fans above the grand porch at The Columns Hotel is no longer enough to keep the cubes of ice in my daily cocktail from melting far too fast. The air rushing through the open windows of the streetcar is now a reasonable facsimile of an open oven on Thanksgiving Day. My seersucker suits are now unable to keep pace with the sweat... what? It's not summer for another eight days? Oh, you're kidding me. And let's face it. ...
Doing It the Right Way
By now, most Fighting Irish fans are familiar with a certain kind of article about Notre Dame football. You know, the kind that serve mostly as click-bait to drive up the pageviews, coming in two flavors: "irrelevant" and "Notre Dame has sold it's soul for football". They, and their target audiences, simply can't reconcile that any school, much less Notre Dame, can achieve success in football by "doing it the right way" off the field as well. ND's current success simply must be a product of some ...
Davidson College Ranks Ahead of The Irish: GSR or a Sick Rick Reilly Fantasy?
I can't do anything about Lo Wood's Achilles, but I can do something about the Janus Bifrons of anti-journalism that is ColinReilly a/k/a RickCowherd. Now, I don't need to go after these dopes on their lazy opinions. Twibby did that already. I'm going to go after their underlying fiction as it pertains to "student-athletics" because I refuse to throw up my hands and acquiesce to the notion that college football is just one big academic fraud (Cowherd) or that Notre Dame needs to be taken down ...