Only 37 percent of UNM football players who entered the University between 1993-1997 graduated within six years, according to a recent report by the NCAA.
The University has the fourth worst graduation rate in the Mountain West Conference, and the 97th worst out of the 117 Division I-A colleges nationwide.
However, UNM officials debate the statistic's credibility, claiming uncontrollable factors negatively impact the percentage.
Danny Trujillo, UNM's assistant athletic director in charge of academic advisement, said the number fails to take into account the athletes who leave UNM for various reasons before graduating.
"A lot of athletes choose to leave the University before earning their degree because their eligibility runs out or because they are injured," Trujillo said. "It is not fair that those students' decisions not to receive their degrees here counts against us."
Trujillo said the NCAA's report is flawed concerning the UNM football team's academic success and, in fact, the sport boasts one of the most successful academic records at the University.
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According to the UNM Athletic department Web site, the football team compiled a 2.69 GPA at the end of the spring semester, the sixth highest of all eight men's sports teams at the University.
Rocky Long, UNM's head football coach, said the means by which the NCAA gathers its statistics is wrong and not only does it make the entire University look bad, it places the Athletics department in a bad situation.
"The NCAA is forcing us to face a double-edged sword here," Long said. "We pride ourselves on the fact that we let anyone try out for our team. If we limited our team to only scholarship athletes, our supposed graduation rate would be higher, but then we would be doing a disservice to the kids who want the chance to play college football."
Jeff Howard, managing director of the NCAA, said the association realizes the flaws in the current system and that universities can be unjustly punished when players in good academic standing transfer to other institutions.
Under the federal standard, an athlete who transfers to another college is considered to have failed to graduate at the first college, even if they were in good academic standing there, Howard said.
Likewise, a student who transfers into an institution - rather than starting there as a freshman - cannot count as a graduate in the federal calculation for the new institution.
"We have 50 walk-on players on the team this year," he said. "It's a reality that someone has to pay their bills and I respect them when they have to make hard decisions for their future. It's absurd that those circumstances should negatively affect our graduation rate."
Long said the athletic department conducted its own research on the football team's graduation rate after realizing the discrepancy and came up with a very different number - 83 percent.
"I'm sure the current system has its problems, but I'm also sure that our guys do their absolute best in academics," said David Fox, senior academic adviser of intercollegiate athletics at UNM. "Regardless of what some report shows, they do an outstanding job in all of their classes."
