• Baylor student-athletes lead Big 12 in graduation rate

    Graduation bearNo, this isn’t a repeat post. About a month ago, we were talking about how Baylor led the Big 12 (again) in football graduation rates.

    Yesterday, the NCAA released numbers pertaining to the athletic department as a whole, and for the second straight year, Baylor’s student-athletes lead the Big 12 Conference in Graduation Success Rate.

    Five Baylor programs (football, baseball, men’s tennis, women’s tennis and women’s golf) led the conference in GSR, while three more ranked second. Men’s and women’s basketball each placed third in the Big 12.

    I never fully appreciated how hard it is for even the smartest student-athlete to keep their GPA up in-season until I traveled full-time with an athletic team a few years ago. Studying for tests while riding a bus back from Dallas or Houston at midnight on a weeknight after spending the previous few hours sweating on a field somewhere — well, I couldn’t have done it.

    That’s not to give some sort of sob story for the athletes, but rather to point out how impressive it is when you read that 44.9% of student-athletes earned a 3.0 or better GPA last fall, or that that number improved to 48.1% this spring.

    Sic ’em, Baylor student-athletes!