99 NCAA teams fail to meet academic standards

INDIANAPOLIS – Teams at 65 schools – including Texas, Tennessee and West Virginia – failed to meet the NCAA’s new academic standards and now face the loss of scholarships for their poor grades.

But don’t look for any of the biggest names in football or basketball on the list released Wednesday by the NCAA of those lagging behind in the classroom.

The only school in the six biggest conferences to be sanctioned in football or men’s basketball, the primary moneymakers for most athletic departments, was DePaul of the Big East. It could lose one scholarship in men’s basketball next year.

University of Maine teams met the standards and are not on the list.

Nationwide, 99 teams could lose scholarships as early as next fall. The new academic points system requires each team to meet minimum requirements or face the potential loss of scholarship money when academically ineligible athletes leave school. No school can lose more than 10 percent of its scholarships. And if the ineligible scholarship athlete stays in school, the NCAA will not take the scholarship away from the athlete’s team.

Sacramento State had the most teams affected (six) and could face the loss of as many as 2.3 scholarships in football. Prairie View A&M in Texas was among the hardest hit schools. As many as 10 athletes in five sports could lose scholarship money, including 5.3 scholarships in football alone.

The NCAA also released a list of schools that consistently outperformed its baseline standards. Among those were Brown, Harvard, Yale, Notre Dame, the three U.S. military academies and William and Mary.