Florida's 2012-13 APR scores are phenomenal

The NCAA released Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores for the 2012-13 academic year on Wednesday. And it should be no shock that Florida, one of the best-run athletic programs in the country, has some phenomenally good ones.

Two sets of Gators, the men's basketball and softball teams, posted perfect scores of 1,000, meaning that Florida had a Final Four team with a perfect APR, which is potentially unprecedented, and might well send a team to the Women's College World Series with the same distinction.

Florida's women's teams, with the exception of women's swimming, all scored better than 980 ... and women's swimming lagged behind at a stellar 978.

And Florida's only teams to post APRs under 960 were its men's swimming, men's indoor track, and men's cross country teams, all of which scored no worse than 944.

Here's the obligatory table. Scores are multi-year rates calculated from the rates of the 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, and 2012-13 academic years.

APR is a flawed measure that doesn't say a lot about individual student achievement, or success in educating student-athletes, but it does say plenty about an athletic department's ability to monitor and maintain the eligiblity of those student-athletes. Scores of 975 or better are really good, scores of 950 are still pretty good, and scores of below 900 have been met with postseason bans in the past. Florida's always been in those upper two ranges.

And Florida's above the nationa average in all four "major" NCAA sports: The national average APR is 967 in baseball, 951 in football, 957 in men's basketball, and 973 in women's basketball.

You can search for more APR scores and compare Florida to other schools using the NCAA's search tool. I'm going to do that, too, and will probably update this post with more findings.

But it bears repeating: Florida's one of the best-run athletics programs in the country, and its fantastic APR scores are a good representation of that.