Not at UConn. Or Rutgers. Let’s backtrack.

The University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports annually releases a reports detailing the academic data of bowl bound schools. This year’s report showed some overall progress in this year’s group of 67 bowl-bound schools as compared to last. About 90 percent of the schools had an APR of 925 or higher (last year just 88 percent did) and 61 of the 67 schools had at least a 50 percent graduation rate for football players (same as last year).

The disappointing numbers this year, the folks at the institution said, come in the racial disparities. Twenty-one of the bowl-bound schools graduate less than 50 percent of their African-American players; only two graduated less than 50 percent of their white players. Fifty-seven schools have a graduation rate of 66 percent or higher for their white players; only 20 can say the same for their black players.

But now there ARE four schools whose graduation rates for black players is higher than those for white players, and two are Big East schools: UConn (5 percent higher) and Rutgers (4 percent higher). The other two are Southern Miss (8 percent) and Troy (7 percent). 

UConn also earns high marks for being one of only two schools with a graduation success rate for football players that exactly matches the overal student population’s at its school.  Fellow Big East school Cincinnati is the other.

Just for the curious: the two bowl-bound schools with the best graduation rates are Navy and Northwestern, the two with the highest APRs are Air Force and Stanford. And two schools, Texas Tech and Troy, had overall graduation success rates for football players that were better than the overall student rates at their schools.

Here’s the full study with all the numbers. It’s kind of fun to see. Would you guess Alabama’s academic numbers blow Texas’ out of the water?