NCAA Division I athletes and the teams they play on are held accountable for their performance in the classroom through the Academic Progress Rate (APR). Now, some administrators want coaches held to the same standard. At least one school is adding APR requirements to its coaching contracts, while the NCAA is implementing a lifetime APR for coaches.

Mississippi State University is inserting a clause into its coaches' contracts as they are negotiated or re-negotiated that allows for termination if the coach's team faces a ban from postseason play for failing to meet historical APR levels. "We wanted to do everything we could to show our support of the APR and at the same time protect the university," says Athletic Director Greg Byrne.

"There's already language in our contracts stating that if a coach has a major violation with the NCAA or continued secondary violations that are ignored, the school can terminate the contract," he continues. "And the penalties involved if APR is not adhered to can be just as significant as being put on probation."

The Bulldogs recently hired new head coaches for baseball and football, and according to Byrne, the APR clause was not a problem in their contract negotiations, in part because both teams are on course in terms of academics. If a coach takes over a team with a low APR, Byrne says the school might modify the clause to give him or her time to turn the team around academically.

On the national level, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors has voted to go ahead with a plan to compile and make public APR information on coaches. Referred to as "liftetime batting averages," the data would provide athletic administrators and the public with a quick view of how a coach's teams have performed academically. The NCAA hopes to have the project up and running by the summer of 2010.

Although leaders of various coaches associations have shown support for the idea, Jim Haney, Executive Director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches has some concerns. "Accountability is important, because without accountability you can let things slide," he told The NCAA News. "But if we're going to make the coach accountable, we need to make sure the [academic] resources are available. There's such a tremendous variance throughout the 330 schools in terms of resources--how can you compare one coach's APR to another?"