Every school gets in players who have no business being at the school, even the Harvard's and Yale's of the world but we were too rigid and or stupid to fudge grades. We are the only big time basketball school I'm aware of who was severely penalized for having kids get bad grades.
We
are the only major school to get hit with the APR standard. The following is from memory from 6 or 7 years ago but I think it's correct.
Back when the APR suspension happened I went to the website (somewhere on NCAA site I think it was) where they showed each year's scores for schools, plus the four year average upon which they were able to penalize us. Remember, if they counted the then current year we would have met the standard but the NCAA said they couldn't count the current year because not all the schools had yet reported.........some were on quarters, etc. That made no sense, but they didn't want us to qualify.
In fact, it looked as if the NCAA waited until we were the only major school not meeting the standard and then hit us. That year there were other schools (like an Alcorn St. or something but I can't recall) that didn't meet the standard but they were all low profile schools.
However, when I looked back several years, Indiana failed to meet the standard for maybe three straight years, Syracuse failed one or more years, as did Arkansas. There may have been others but I saw enough at that point and didn't search further.
The rule had been in effect for years but never implemented. Calhoun fought them on Nate Miles related penalties and ridiculed them about the dumb rules they were using to penalize us then, so they waited until they could hit us with a suspension on the APR rule.