The University of Georgia proclaims it is a powerhouse in academics and athletics.

The Georgia football team is certainly a perennial championship contender with back-to-back national titles in 2021 and 2022 and ranking as high as No. 3 after this season.

The program, though, is at the bottom of more than 130 FBS programs when it comes to the latest NCAA graduation rate metric.

Why is that?

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Only three years earlier, the school trumpeted that UGA athletics set a record with an 87 percent Graduation Success Rate (GSR) across all of its teams with 25 full-time staff members who worked in their Student Services department at the Rankin Smith Academic Center and more than 100 tutors and mentors.

In 2015, it sent out a press release that mentioned Georgia football’s 73 percent GSR rate were among its teams rated in the top seven in the SEC.

“At the University of Georgia, we are committed to supporting the success of our student-athletes on the field of play but also — and more importantly — in the classroom and in life after graduation,” UGA President Jere Morehead said then.

In the latest GSR rate released in December, Georgia football posted a 41 GSR rate, lagging far behind others in the conference. LSU was next closest in the SEC at 69.

“It hits hard and we know we need to do better,” David Shipley, Georgia’s faculty athletic representative since 2010, said last week in an interview. “In a way, I think we saw this coming with that particular cohort… you had a coaching change.”

The current data reflects six-year graduation rates for those entering the school from 2013-16 which were the final three seasons under coach Mark Richt and the first season under Kirby Smart.

Football power Alabama came in at 93 and Florida at 92, trailing only Vanderbilt’s 95.

What Kirby Smart said about the Georgia football GSR rate

Among Power Five Conference schools, UCLA had the next lowest GSR after Georgia at 64.

Shipley said Georgia focuses on how it compares to other SEC schools and state rival Georgia Tech, which had an 88.

“Bottom line is we need to do better,” Shipley said. “Hopefully it will start showing up better in the next couple of years.”

Only FCS member Texas A&M Commerce was lower among NCAA schools at 39.

“There are a lot of factors that impact those numbers, some are in our control and some are not,” Smart said in a statement to the Athens Banner-Herald through an athletics spokesperson. “Our academic people do a great job with our players. We are very proud of the fact that we had 19 student-athletes eligible to wear the graduate patch on their chest during the Orange Bowl.”

The NCAA graduation success rate, unlike the federal rates required by the U.S. Department of Education, does not penalize schools whose athletes leave as transfers in good academic standing and counts transfers into their schools in the calculation.

“Since I have been the head coach, we have had five players return to the University and finish their degree and we have four former players enrolled in classes this spring,” Smart said. “We understand we have to continue to improve in this area and we will.”

Sedrick Van Pran-Granger, who entered the program in 2020 and is an early-round NFL draft prospect this year after three years as a starting center, is one semester away from earning his degree.

“I can definitely say this, I think everybody in that building pushes guys to get degrees,” he said. “I’ve heard Coach Smart say multiple times football doesn’t last forever. Obviously, some guys may not take that as serious just because you’re currently playing. There’s definitely a focus for guys to get their degrees. … At the end of the day, it’s your own personal choice. If you want to take the money for football and you want to be an entrepreneur, that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person because you didn’t get a degree.”

How Georgia athletics is addressing improving the GSR rate

In 2019, the Georgia Athletic Association stepped up its continuous academic progress monitoring and intervened more to keep athletes on track academically. The focus became more on frontloading credits rather than a minimum credit model.

Shipley said former deputy director for academics Magdi El Shahawy put an emphasis then on players taking 15 credits per semester and if a player struggles, he could drop a class and still be at 12.

“I think you could say the philosophy before is what can we do to boost GPAs but maybe what we’ve decided now is what’s more important is raise those graduation rates and the emphasis on the credit hours per term,” Shipley said.

Georgia had 34 players who did not graduate during the 4-year cohort, of which 13 of those arrived after Smart was hired in December of 2015.

“We have worked hard to be thoughtful and intentional about implementing strategies that will hopefully lead to better GSR outcomes,” athletic director Josh Brooks said in a statement. “But it should be made clear that GSR is not the most reliable indicator of our student-athletes’ academic success — our efforts are not limited to a six-year window. Graduation along with providing targeted, differentiated and informed support for our student-athletes continues to be the goal. We have made significant progress in this area and acknowledge there is more work to be done to ensure that our vision is realized.”

It was 10 years ago that Georgia was recognized by the American Football Coaches Association along with Rice, Stanford and Tulane for a 100 percent graduation rate for members of the 2006 freshman class.

Why graduation still matters for some Georgia Bulldogs pursuing NFL careers

Running back Kendall Milton, the Orange Bowl MVP, played four seasons for the Bulldogs and graduated in December with a degree in consumer economics.

“That was something I kind of set before I even committed to a school,” he said. “Education was a very important aspect to me just because for me I know football is going to end at some point and I have my goals, things I want to do in terms of business and certain things in my career. I feel like having my degree in higher education was going to be kind of a foot ahead, a kind of big step in reaching that.”

Milton said both his parents and a brother have college degrees so he "kind of just felt that was mandatory. There was no other option," he said. "Even if it was a situation where I went out in three years, I would have 100 percent come back and got my degree.”

Milton said graduating probably meant more to his mother than anything else he accomplished at Georgia.

Wide receiver Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint, who entered Georgia in 2020 and is now an NFL draft prospect, said he’d be the first from his family to get a college degree. He said he has one semester to go.

“It’s always been a big deal for me,” he said. “To do something that nobody in my family ever did.”

Shipley said experienced counselors are working with Georgia players and he think incrementally the GSR rates can go up.

Georgia said nine teams, including football (2.83), received their highest fall GPA in 2022.

“We try to identify who’s having a problem at an earlier stage,” Shipley said. “We’re in person for counseling sessions and tutoring sessions. We didn’t do that for a couple of years (during the pandemic) and I think in person is better than doing those things online.”

He said players moving on to the NFL without completing their degrees has an impact, but Georgia’s not alone in that.

“That’s not unique to us,” he said. “Alabama has a lot of kids go to the draft, so does LSU. We’re not the only school that’s had great success in the NFL draft so that’s not an excuse.”

Van Pran-Granger said even if he has a long NFL career, he wants to get his college degree because it’s important to his mother.

“I definitely want to honor her and make sure I get that for her,” he said.

Shipley said he speaks to Morehead about particular teams underachieving in the classroom.

“He’s aware of it and he wants us to improve,” said Shipley, a UGA law school professor since 1998. “There’s no doubt about it. Campus-wide, he promotes, touts our great first to second year retention rate, our four-year graduation rate, our six-year graduation rate, points of pride. President Morehead very much wants our athletics to be much closer to those numbers than they are now. With most sports, we’re doing fine.”

Milton said running backs coach Dell McGee told players, “it’d be honestly dumb to come to a school and a let the school use you without getting anything out of it. That’s something he’s been saying since my freshman year.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Georgia football last in FBS in NCAA grad rate. How UGA is responding