The Mississippi football team's 2014 grade-point average is reminding everyone that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Fansided.com reported that Mississippi football coach Hugh Freeze tweeted that his team earned the highest grade-point average in the recorded history of the program, thanking the school's student-athlete academic success center for the unprecedented score.
The GPA, however, was 2.57, and not everyone was as impressed as Freeze.
@CoachHughFreeze @UMTrueRebel nothing like accepting average!
— Ryan Nolan ® (@rpatricknolan) December 18, 2014
@CoachHughFreeze @UMTrueRebel .....why are you celebrating borderline failure — Carolyn Lasky (@carolaskyn) December 18, 2014
To be fair, football programs generally have lower grade-point averages among the athletic programs in each school. As Freeze pointed out, a team can have 120 players or more - by far the most student-athletes in any program, which naturally make it harder on football to turn in higher GPAs.
Not a lot of data about FBS team grade-point averages is available online, and that could be because of the mediocre numbers across the board.
For example, a June, 2013 article in the Eastern Echo reported that Eastern Michigan's football team had a 2.69 GPA.
A 2010 article on the 2009 Northern Illinois football team reported a 2.83 GPA.
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A 2013 article about the Louisville Cardinals football team indicated that the team posted a 2.76 GPA in the fall of 2012.
In 2012, ESPN reported that the University of South Florida posted a record GPA of 2.76, which bettered the previous record of 2.64.
And an older article - 2006 to be precise - reported that the Alabama football team had a 2.379 average at the end of that season.
Freeze was perfectly within his right to celebrate a program high. That doesn't mean the Rebels don't have room to improve, but fans might want to do some research about averages before blasting a school for its best work - no matter the score.
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