{"id":60423,"date":"2014-07-23T16:12:27","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T20:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=60423"},"modified":"2018-08-27T16:22:53","modified_gmt":"2018-08-27T20:22:53","slug":"americans-top-football-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/americans-top-football-program\/","title":{"rendered":"The American’s Top Football Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

UCF football exited Conference USA by claiming the league\u2019s Sport Academic Award in back-to-back seasons for 2011 and 2012. Now as a member of the American Athletic Conference, the Knights continued that trend Wednesday by earning the Team Academic Excellence Award<\/a> as The American\u2019s top football program in the classroom.<\/p>\n

The honor is handed out following a 2013 campaign on the gridiron in which UCF went 8-0 in The American to win the inaugural conference title as well. It ultimately finished ranked No. 10 with a 12-1 overall mark and a win in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.<\/p>\n

Winners of The American Team Academic Excellence Award are chosen based on the 2013-14 grade-point average of each student-athlete who appeared on an institution\u2019s roster as of the last contest of the championship segment in each conference-sponsored sport. UCF was chosen for having the highest collective grade-point averages in football. Selections were made by the conference\u2019s Academic Affairs Committee.<\/p>\n

Academic accolades are becoming a staple for head coach George O\u2019Leary and his Knights. UCF boasted a program-high Academic Progress Rate of 994 for 2012-13, only six points shy of a perfect score and tied for fifth in the country. It also marked eight straight years that UCF was ahead of the national average. UCF\u2019s multi-year APR<\/a> jumped from 975 to 978, placing the Knights 15th overall among all FBS schools.<\/p>\n

The Knights Graduation Success Rate recently checked in at 83 percent, or 12 points above the national average.<\/p>\n

In UCF\u2019s last year in C-USA, it became the first program in league history to record at least a 3.0 or better in football as it posted a 3.024 team GPA during 2012-13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UCF Football Team Earns Academic Excellence Award<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":60424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-twocol.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[9805,1810,1939,3346,202],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-60423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-american-athletic-conference","tag-football","tag-george-oleary","tag-ncaa","tag-alumni"],"yoast_head":"\nThe American's Top Football Program | University of Central Florida News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"UCF Football Team Earns Academic Excellence Award\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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