Brenda McKinney, member of the Grambling University women’s basketball team filed a federal lawsuit against the NCAA seeking to certify a class of Black Division I athletes who competed for HBCUs last year. The suit alleges that they were victims of racial discrimination by the NCAA’s system of academic enforcement. It’s in regard to the league’s Academic Performance Program, also known as “APP.” Attorney Elizabeth Feagan explained the suit in detail.
“The reason that we filed the lawsuit is because the benchmark that’s chosen intentionally discriminates against black student athletes at historically black colleges and universities.”
According to the NCAA, The Academic Performance Program is designed to ensure Division I student-athletes receive exemplary educational and intercollegiate-athletics experiences. The APP encourages student-athlete graduation through a reward and penalty system directly tied to a team’s academic performance. The APP umbrella covers both the Academic Progress Rate and Graduation Success Rate.
The APP was adopted by the NCAA in 2004, and part of its addendum was to penalize programs that fail to meet the benchmarks of its two main standards, the Academic Progress Rate and Graduation Success Rate. Failure to meet these standards could result in missing post season play.
McKinney presented data showing that HBCU schools are far more likely than non-HBCU institutions to receive postseason bans related to the APP. Fegan says the focus of the lawsuit is to force the NCAA to stop setting standards regardless of the school or the mission of the school that the student athlete attends.
According to Fegan, the NCAA awards certain points for GPA for the time a student-athlete is in school or score for a particular team. If that rolling 4 year doesn’t match up to the benchmark, then the NCAA has the right to insert penalties to a team. With that being said, this means if a team’s overall points or score doesn’t meet the standard no matter when a new student athlete joins the team, they all could still face major penalties or suspension.
The final Academic Progress Rate score is based on four academic years of data. Programs that fail to meet a 930 multi-year APR score are then subject to punitive measures, typically in the form of postseason ineligibility. The issue for McKinney is HBCU standards, academics and requirements may not be the same as those of PWI’s. Fegan says McKinney’s reason for filing this suit was simply to help others.
“Her goal was to really make change. For all Division-1 athletes at HBCUs to make sure none of them had to face a ban.”
A settlement conference in the lawsuit is set for Tuesday July 16, while the deposition is scheduled for Wednesday, July 17.
Brandolyn Hellams is a journalist and producer in Atlanta, who covers sports and entertainment.
