For years, officials with the National Collegiate Athletic Association have predicted that strikingly high numbers of college sports teams could be at risk this year of losing scholarships because of their athletes’ poor performance in the classroom.
But on Tuesday, when the NCAA released its fourth annual report measuring how much progress athletes are making toward completing their degrees, the number of teams penalized represented just over 3 percent of the more than 6,000 programs that exist in Division Iâ??only a slight increase from last year, and far less than the dire predictions.