South Carolina’s football team returned to a bowl game after missing one last year, and the Gamecocks compare well to the rest of the bowl teams in one key metric.
Graduating its players.
According to a report from The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida, the Gamecocks are among the top bowl teams in graduation success rate, an NCAA metric that tracks athlete graduation rates.
South Carolina’s rate of 95 percent puts it at an elite level with Stanford (99), Northwestern (97), Wake Forest (91) and UCF (91). The average for bowl teams was 75 percent, up from last year.
The report also pointed to a gap between African-American and white players of 19 percent for all teams, but African-American Gamecocks players bucked that trend, graduating at a rate 2 percent better than their white teammates. The football team was also 4 percent ahead of USC student-athletes overall.
Ben Breiner
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