MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Some of the nation’s best academic schools also are making an impact on big-time college football.
Of the top 12 Football Bowl Subdivision programs with the lowest acceptance rates, nine of them have qualified for bowl games this year, while four have had double-digit win seasons.
Mississippi State will face one of those programs, Rice, in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl at 3 p.m. Tuesday (ESPN). According to U.S. News, Rice is the 32nd most selective school to get into, but it defeated Marshall to win its first Conference USA championship since joining the league in 2006.
Rice coach David Bailiff, who has guided the team to back-to-back bowl games, doesn’t believe academic standards and strict entrance requirements restrict his ability to recruit top-notch players.
“I truly believe the public schools in this country are really starting to more properly equip high school students to be able to handle being a student first here at Rice,” Bailiff said. “We see it as a competitive advantage to be able to recruit to a very impressive degree when you walk out the door here.”
This season, Stanford (Rose Bowl), Duke (Chick-fil-A Bowl), Vanderbilt, which is in its third-straight bowl game, and Northwestern, which was ranked as high as No. 16 in The Associated Press poll, flexed their muscles against the rest of the country. Last season, Notre Dame, Stanford, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt were ranked in the top 20 in the U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges rankings and the final USA Today college football coaches rankings.
“I don’t think it’s a disadvantage (coaching at and recruiting to a school with high academic standards) because when you walk into the home and can tell the parents their child has a chance to earn one of the most prestigious degrees in the country, why would they not want that opportunity?” Bailiff said.
Last year, Northwestern earned a school-record fifth straight bowl trip (the previous high was two) and notched its third 10-win season in school history with a 34-20 victory against MSU in the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla. Rice will be MSU’s third bowl game opponent (Wake Forest and Northwestern) to be ranked in the top 100 most selective colleges in the country.
MSU is a world apart from Rice in terms of acceptance rates, tuition, and undergraduate enrollment. From an academic standpoint, Bailiff and MSU coach Dan Mullen face similar challenges getting student-athletes into their schools. At Rice, Bailiff has to maintain the institution’s standards. At MSU, Mullen’s task is to make sure in-state students have the necessary core classes before they arrive on campus. With the state of Mississippi being ranked one of the lowest in the country in education, some of the state’s smaller schools don’t offer some of the core classes student-athletes need to pass to be eligible.
Mullen’s current academic problem is getting in-state recruits to graduate early and to enroll at MSU in December so they can be eligible to participate in spring football practices. Four-star linebacker prospect Gerri Green, a four-year Honor Roll student, is the latest student-athlete who has been restricted by his high school, Greenville-Weston, from graduating early even though the state Department of Education adopted the Early Exit Diploma program this academic year, meant to encourage students to leave early after mastering the curriculum. Mullen repeatedly used that approach as a recruiting tool when he worked for coach Urban Meyer at Utah and Florida.
“It’s just tougher here in Mississippi because a lot of the high schools restrict guys from graduating early,” Mullen said. “I think it’s really too bad because for a lot of kids who are really good high school students have potential on the football field.”
Leading up to the 2013 Gator Bowl, Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald said his school’s academic demands weren’t an excuse that prevented his program from competing at an elite level.
“I think it’s a major reason we’ve had so much success in that we’ve had to target high character, highly committed, highly intelligent kids that understand what it means to be at Northwestern,” Fitzgerald said. “We believe we have our administration’s support and that with the type of kids we bring into this program, we can compete to win the Big Ten every season.”
Rice quarterback Taylor McHargue is a perfect example. McHargue has the team’s highest grade-point average in the finance department. The Managerial Studies graduate completed three summer internships, starting with one in Rice’s finance department. McHargue then completed a four-month internship at Merrill Lynch in Houston and another with private law firm, Andrews Myers, P.C, in Austin and Houston.
Not too many Football Bowl Subdivision quarterbacks can perform at a high level in a suit and in shoulder pads, but McHargue has led Rice to back-to-back bowl games. Last season, Rice finished 7-6 thanks to a 33-14 victory against Air Force in the Armed Forces Bowl. It accomplished that feat with the fifth-highest graduation rate (93 percent) among FBS programs. With a similar graduation rate this season, Bailiff knows his upperclassmen have led the charge for the Owls.
“When you look at those 23 seniors and 19 fifth-year guys, this is what they said they wanted to do,” Bailiff said. “They had a dream and they matched it with effort, and here we are making their dreams come true. What a legacy this senior class is going to leave us and this university.”
In the past six seasons, the top 12 programs in graduation rate have had winning percentages above .500. In 2012, those 12 schools have had their highest winning percentage (59.3 percent) in the past decade.
“People forget programs like Duke were in it late for a ACC championship game last year, too,” ESPN.com Atlantic Coast Conference reporter Heather Dinich said. “This is back-to-back seasons of them being a contender, but this year they’re even closer. As far as (Duke) continuing it, it depends on the direction of Virginia Tech and Miami.”
Northwestern has broken ground on a $220-million lakeside athletics facility that will include the football program’s first on-campus headquarters. Duke began a massive renovation of 84-year-old Wallace Wade Stadium as part of a $100-million athletic facilities upgrade. Stanford’s has completed a $17-million addition to the school’s athletics building. These financial investments provide tangible evidence that the academic elite schools no longer are settling for being bowl eligible.
“People aren’t use to thinking about Duke,” said Duke coach David Cutcliffe, who went 44-29 at Ole Miss from 1998-2004. “I don’t care where you are. As you look at a team, you make an assessment, ‘Can we compete for a championship? Are we capable of competing for a championship if we do the right things?’ ”
Follow Matt Stevens on Twitter @matthewcstevens.
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