Academics: FSU football APR improves, still ranks low nationally
The Florida State football program showed modest improvement in the NCAA's latest Academic Progress Rate numbers, which were released Tuesday, but there is still a great deal of room to grow.
The statistics, which were updated following the 2018-19 academic year, show that the Seminoles improved their single-year APR from 922 (out of of 1,000) to 956 -- a surge of 34 points.
That improvement brought the program's multi-year APR, a four-year rolling score which is seen as the more important metric to determine a program's academic health, up to 942 -- six points higher than it was a year ago.
While any progress is positive, the Seminoles still have one of the worst APRs in the country for football.
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Last year, the Seminoles' multi-year APR was the lowest in the entire Football Bowl Subdivision. This year, the Seminoles have pushed out of the overall cellar, but they still rank worst among Power 5 schools. Their score of 942 is two points behind the next-lowest-ranked Power 5 school, UCLA.
FSU's multi-year APR of 942 is far behind the rest of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The next-lowest ACC scores are Virginia Tech at 958 and North Carolina at 959.
From a single-year perspective, the Seminoles' 956 for 2018-19 ranks 12th out of 14 schools -- only North Carolina (940) and N.C. State (946) fared worse.
*ALSO SEE -- More notes on the latest APR numbers
Former FSU coach Willie Taggart started getting the program's academics trending in a better direction during his two-year tenure, but there was a lot of ground to make up following Jimbo Fisher's awful final years.
Like Taggart, new head coach Mike Norvell has promised to make academics an important aspect of his program. This spring, the Seminoles posted their highest cumulative grade-point average for a semester at 3.127.
According to the NCAA, the APR is designed to measure "eligibility, graduation and retention each semester or academic term" for every individual sports program.
Some of the factors that can hurt a program's APR include players becoming ineligible, failing to graduate on time and leaving school while not in satisfactory academic standing.
Here are the multi-year rates for every FSU program (from best to worst):
1,000 -- Women's cross country, women's golf, women's tennis and women's track
997 -- Softball and soccer
995 -- Volleyball and women's beach volleyball
990 -- Men's and women's swimming and diving
988 -- Men's golf
985 -- Men's basketball
979 -- Women's basketball
978 -- Men's track
972 -- Men's cross country
971 -- Baseball
962 -- Men's tennis
942 -- Football
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