UT GPAs up, football by .63

KNOXVILLE -- Tennessee's football team is hoping for a bounce-back season on the field this fall.

The Volunteers already had a bounce-back spring in the classroom.

After earning a 2.08 grade point average for the fall semester, the Vols' team GPA was 2.71 this spring, according to a Monday afternoon release from the university announcing the graduation of 51 student-athletes and listing the GPAs of every UT team.

"At the core of our mission is the pursuit of comprehensive excellence, and this includes performance in the classroom as a top priority," vice chancellor and athletic director Dave Hart said in the release. "Our expectation is that student-athletes will earn a degree, and we commend the 51 who achieved that goal this spring."

The football team was one of eight that improved its GPA from the fall semester. Eleven of UT's 16 varsity sports achieved a 3.0 GPA or higher in the spring. The men's basketball team GPA of 2.55 was the lowest in the spring, though that program's GPA continued to rise.

According to a report by Knoxville radio station WNML late last month, the football team's semester academically was so poor that 30 Vols were on academic probation for GPAs under 2.0, meaning they could face dismissal if their spring GPA was below that same number.

Coach Derek Dooley attributed the poor performance to a number of factors, including the team's rough season and turnover at the Thornton Center for student-athlete academics. He since has said publicly he expected a better spring, and that turned out to be true. Defensive lineman Corey Miller and offensive lineman JerQuari Schofield did not participate in spring practice due to academics.

"There's several guys we're always concerned about every year going down the stretch," Dooley said two weeks ago. "The reality is you lose one or two every year. Hopefully we won't, but that's kind of the nature of the beast and every team deals with it."