ESPN Independents and Others Blog

Posted by ESPN.com's Graham Watson

At least 11 schools from the Independents and Others were handed NCAA scholarships losses on Wednesday after the NCAA released its APR findings.

Bowling Green, San Jose State, Alabama-Birmingham, New Mexico State, North Texas, San Diego State, Kent State, Buffalo, Temple, Florida Atlantic, and Louisiana-Lafayette all face scholarship losses for the 2009-10 season, though several schools were prepared and took their penalties either last year or against the 2009 signing class.

Teams such as Kent State and North Texas, who were docked five and six scholarships, respectively, used some of the penalty against last year's squad. New Mexico State, which had three scholarship losses, used them against this year's signing class. Buffalo, Florida Atlantic and Bowling Green, which all lost one scholarship, applied the penalty last year as well.

Teams such as UAB and San Jose State are still paying penalties from ailing APR scores in past years, though both schools had above average APR scores for the 2007-08 season, the results that were just released. Still, San Jose State will have just 75 scholarships available for the 2009-10 season and UAB will lose two hours of practice time per week. Both schools expect all sanctions to be lifted for the 2010-11 season.

Temple, which was granted a waiver by the NCAA for an occasion III historical penalty because the program's four-year score of 891 fell below the 900 APR threshold. However, the three-year APR average for Temple football, which reflects the team's current student-athletes and the recruiting classes since coach Al Golden's arrival is 922, which is above the APR threshold for historical penalties.

The APR is the NCAA's system of tracking academic progress in student athletes and calculates eligibility, retention and graduation. The standard is a score of 925, and a score of 925 out of 1,000 projects to a 60 percent graduation rate on an annual basis.