The annual academic status report for bowl-bound college football teams was released nationally Monday morning. With that, two main observations came to mind for attorney Len Elmore, a noted educational advocate for a better balance between academic awareness and campus sports pursuits in the lives of major college athletes.
“The report is both revealing and frightening,” Elmore, a college basketball television analyst and former member of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, told Diverse. “That the College Football Playoff participants still have a long way to go in bringing parity to the (graduation rates) between Black and White athletes.” 
He continued: “Michigan State graduates 100 percent of its White football players compared to 72 percent of all football players and 87 percent of all student-athletes. Yet, a mere 57 percent of Black football players graduate in East Lansing.”
Michigan State is headed to the Holiday Bowl.
The racial disparity in graduation rates for Black and White football players is featured prominently in the report despite a bit of good news in comparison to last year’s results.
The good news: Overall academic progress for college football players continues on an upward trend.
Dr. Richard Lapchick, the primary author of the report, said, “The academic success of FBS football student-athletes continued to grow this year. The overall football student-athlete Graduation Success Rate (GSR) for bowl-bound teams is 77 percent, up from 75 percent in 2016.”
