Georgia Southern's football team made a statement about winning off the field by posting its highest-ever spring semester and academic year grade-point averages. Winning on the field, with back-to-back appearances in the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision semifinals, the Eagles now have back-to-back record GPAs for the last two academic years, and record-high GPAs for both the fall and spring semesters.
    For the 2011-12 academic year, the Eagle football team posted its highest-ever GPA with a 2.64, topping the mark set last year. The full-year team GPA for 2011-12 was .11 higher than the record set in
2010-11 (team GPA of 2.53).         The GSU football program-record 2.70 semester GPA for spring 2012 followed the best-ever fall semester GPA of 2.58 registered in 2011.
    Not only did the team improve the full-year and single-semester GPAs, but the number of student-athletes earning spots on the President’s and Dean’s Lists also increased. For spring 2012, a record-number 49 Eagles posted GPAs of 3.0 or above with seven players named to the President’s List for their 4.0 GPAs, and 11 players named to the Dean’s List with a GPA of 3.5 or above.
    The GSU football program’s commitment to excellence is reflected in other key numbers tied to academic success as the Eagles earned the program’s best single-year NCAA Academic Progress Rate (APR) of 953 for the 2010-11 reporting period. APR was instituted by the NCAA as a means for providing intercollegiate athletics programs with a snapshot of a team's academic success and progress of individual student-athletes, accounting for eligibility, retention and graduation. Twenty-one seniors will earn degrees in 2011-12.