Fresno State football Graduation Success Rate reaches an all-time high 89 percent

Matt Weir / The Collection

With all the national recognition Fresno State football has amassed this past decade, the Bulldogs are starting to make some noise in the classroom as well.

In his recent weekly Monday morning press conference, head coach Pat Hill, who is currently in his 14th season as the Bulldog leader, announced the NCAA Graduation Success Rate for 2003-04 season of 89 percent, 10 percent better than the national average. The rates are tallied and announced every six years.

The number is easily the highest total in Hill’s tenure since taking over the program in 1997, a year to forget 13 years ago for Fresno State football academics.

“We’re really proud of the changes we’ve made here academically,” Hill said. “I still carry the same newspaper I take into all the houses with me from 1997 when Fresno State was rated the worst in the country in graduation rate.”

That newspaper reported Fresno State of having a graduation rate was a dismal 33 percent, but has since nearly tripled. The dramatic increase has given Hill some extra selling points when entering homes on the recruiting trail.

“It helps a lot,” Hill said. “But you know the number one thing that I say to parents when I’m in the house, the only graduation rate that you should care about is your son’s. Just as long as you’re 100 percent at your house, that’s all that matters.”

Hill credits former Fresno State special teams coordinator John Baxter, who is in his first season as USC’s special teams coordinator, for much of the rise in academic numbers and graduation rates. Baxter implemented what is known as the Academic Gameplan, a time management program that Hill said helps prepare his athletes for life after football.

During Baxter’s 12 seasons with Fresno State, academics became a priority for the program, not an afterthought. Although the process has been time consuming, Hill said upperclassmen leadership has changed the makeup in the locker room from strictly football to student-athlete.

“All of the sudden it became OK to be a good student,” Hill said. “We had to change the culture of what was important. It has taken time. It took us time to do it, but it’s been established and now when young kids come in the older kids do a great job of making sure they understand that it’s serious around here.”

While Hill insisted that academic success does not exactly correlate to on-field execution, the program has caught the nation’s by eye not only in academics, but on the field as well. Over the course of the past decade, Fresno State football ranks 18th nationally in wins and 24 former Bulldogs are on current NFL rosters.

Through the years, Fresno State has proven to be an academic anchor in the Western Athletic Conference, producing 18 academic All-WAC performers, a record in the history of the conference for a decade. Five players were nominated for academic All-American honors last season as well with Andrew Jackson, Ben Jacobs, Kevin Goessling, Bryce Harris and Lorne Bell.

Fresno State’s academic success is just a small portion of an ongoing trend spreading across the country in all sports. The NCAA’s web site reported a Division-I record high 79 percent national GSR, which began in 2003. Although Fresno State football is well above the national GSR average, rival Boise State, who has dominated the WAC this decade and is currently ranked fourth in the BCS Standings, is below the national line at 65 percent. Stanford, Iowa and Virginia Tech are the only schools in the BCS top-25 that are at or over the national average. The entire BCS top-10 is below 79 percent.

“I’d like to say we’re very, very proud of that here at Fresno State,” Hill said. “For my first six years I had to go into houses and defend what we were going to do for young men when they came to Fresno State… I look to see another good [year] in the 80s, hopefully next year.”