More bowl-bound black football players are graduating, but still at lower rates than their white teammates

Of the 68 schools going to bowl games, 19 graduated less than 50% of black players, according to the report by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida. The gap between bowl-bound graduating white and black players also closed a bit, from 18% in 2007 to 16%. The number of black graduates grew from 55.5% to 59.1%. However, the gap widened among the 119-member FBS schools. At those, a total of 76% of whites graduated compared with 59% of blacks in the study. In 2007, 64% of whites and 50% of blacks graduated. The study showed the graduation rate among all black males in the student body of the schools studied is 38%.