This year, however, ESPN columnist Gregg Easterbrook sought to address how the top 25 BCS teams would fare if they were evaluated on academic performance instead of athletic achievement.

Easterbrook put the question to Lindsey Luebchow, policy analyst for the New America Foundation and a contributor to the Higher Ed Watch blog. After a couple months of planning, Luebchow devised a strategy for deciding the Academic BCS rankings.

The rankings are based on a give-and-take-points method, and there are three categories in which schools can receive and lose points: the football team's federal graduation rate in comparison to the school's overall rate, the team's black-white graduation rate gap in comparison to the school's black-white graduation rate gap, and the team's academic progress rate (APR) in comparison to the national median.

With the new criteria taken into consideration, Boston College topped the chart of BCS hopefuls and Virginia Tech ranked No. 6 overall, just under UVa, which came in at No. 5.

Of all the BCS-bound bowl teams announced on Sunday, Tech was the highest ranked team academically.

"I worked with Gregg at ESPN, and we thought it would be interesting to bring attention to the issue if we timed the rankings to come out with the BCS rankings," Luebchow said. "We thought it would be an interesting exercise and hoped it would give credit to the teams who are doing well and bring attention to those not doing so well."

The larger point of the rankings, according to Luebchow, is that the football players who carry their schools to big, prestigious bowl games are actually student-athletes, but colleges treat them as athletes only.

The academic rankings are important because student-athletes should always be considered students first.

"They're using these students to make money and aren't supporting them as students. They lower academic standards for athletes and give them tools to get the degree, but not the education. A lot of these players won't go to the NFL and need an education to prepare them for the future," she said.

One statistic from her calculations showed that only 56 percent of Division I-A football players entering college between 1997 and 2000 graduated within six years of initial enrollment.

According to Chris Helms, director of student-athlete academic support services, Tech's federal graduation rates are very high this year. In the 2007 report, the football team's graduation rate was 80 percent, the student-athletes' rate was 76 percent and the overall student body's rate was 79 percent.

"Our federal numbers have never been higher," Helms said.

Luebchow said she was not surprised that Boston College ranked No. 1 because their athletic teams are generally high performing, but she admitted to being surprised that UVa and Tech were ranked so close together. She said that both schools got points in different areas, but she was still surprised that UVa did not do better.

"I've seen many rankings over the years of student-athletes and year after year they perform rather well," said Larry Hincker, university spokesman. "Tech's graduation rate as compared to other large state and land grant universities is generally very high. I'm pleased with the football team, but I'm not very surprised."

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