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Friday, March 23, 2007
AU hires new AD
Keith Gill has been named as American's new director of athletics and recreation.

Gill comes to AU from Oklahoma, where he was a senior associate athletics director since 2004. A graduate of Duke, where he played football, Gill's experience includes two stints with the NCAA, wrapped around a short gig as an assistant AD at Vanderbilt.

In a press release announcing Gill's hiring, AU Interim President Neil Kerwin said, ". . . we were impressed with Keith's strong commitment to the twin values of academic and athletics achievement that we strongly embrace."

Given the general league-wide concerns over AU's academic profile as it compares with the rest of the Patriot League, Gill's hiring might raise a few eyebrows, though. If you throw out the commitment rhetoric and look at the facts, Gill is not exactly coming from an institution known for athletes hitting the books.

The Sooners ranking in the latest NCAA graduation rate studies are well below average, even among the big-time BCS-type schools. The average graduation rate for all Division I-A student athletes was 78 percent in the latest study. Oklahoma's athletes graduated at a 67-percent rate. The national average for men's basketball players at those schools that play I-A football was 57 percent; Oklahoma's rate was 41 percent.

It is worth noting that AU would gladly trade its 18-percent basketball graduation rate for Oklahoma's 41 percent. But neither approaches the standard set by the rest of the Patriot League. Of the seven other league schools, four (Bucknell, Holy Cross, Lafayette and Navy) had graduation success rates of 100 percent for men's hoopsters. Army checked in at 97 percent, Lehigh 93 percent and Colgate 92 percent.
  • To view school-by-school graduation rate data, click here and select the school from the pull down menus

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    • Published at 8:22 AM by Hoop Time.
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