The [BYU football] coaches must be accepting players with lower academic standards than they are in the other sports.

Your argument that BYU football brings in players by relaxing BYU admissions standards doesn't make any sense. College undergraduate admissions considerations are comprised of many factors, including high school grade point average, entrance exams (either SAT or ACT), admissions essay(s), extracurricular activities, interviews, and letters of recommendation. BYU's admissions process is much more rigorous than many schools. At the same time, average grades and test scores aren't a "floor" for football players or other admissions applicants. A lower GPA or entrance exam score can be mitigated by other factors. Everyone I know knows this. I am sure you know this, but have just been playing dumb in this thread.

In any case, you comments assume BYU is the only university where some athletes' grades or test scores may be below the university average. If your saying that issue is unique to BYU, that is laughable.

APR is supposed to measure a program's graduation rate. However, rather than wait for 4-6 years and get the true graduation rate, the NCAA apparently decided it would like more immediate feedback. So the NCAA artificially constructs a four-year score by conducting an analysis yearly. Not only does this mean the APR does not give a "true" graduation rate, but it also hurts BYU because we have players leaving in large numbers for missions every year. We can't avoid getting dinged.

As I said previously, a 925 APR is supposed to be equivalent to a 50% graduation rate. BYU's current four-year score is 932, up from 928 for the four year period ending with the 2009-2010 academic year. That is dangerously close to a 50% graduation rate. Nobody really believes BYU has a true 50% graduation rate among scholarship recipients on its football team, do they? Do you?

Where do you describe why football has a lower APR than other sports? Are other sports not dealing with missions and athletes who could be struggling with academics? I don't see anything in your post that specifically discusses football.

So (to paraphrase): Either I explain to you why BYU's football and basketball APRs are so different or you must be right. Yet you don't have the raw data needed to support your theory. I don't have the raw data to test your theory. 

Here are some distinctions between BYUs football team and other BYU teams subject to APR reporting: First, in the case of football and basketball, there are like ten times more scholarship football players than scholarship basketball players. Therefore the basketball team has many fewer scholarship players to keep track of than football. Second, players who transfer to the program post-mission or serve their missions before enrolling (more common in basketball than football) do not cause an APR hit for their team. Women's sports at BYU do not tend to have mission departures, so no APR hit for those teams.

But let's look at it from another angle. Your argument is (to paraphrase again): "The only conclusion you can draw from the distinction between BYU's football and other sports APRs is that BYU admits too many stupid football players." This is wrong and you know it.

Remember, per our APR, BYU supposedly has a 50% graduation rate among football players. However, the football team is not that much different from the school at large. And the way APR is calculated (with exemptions for transfers and kids who leave early for the pros), it should actually give a higher graduation rate to the team than the institution at large. This is because it is not a true "graduation rate." A squad can have kids transfer out and leave to play at the professional level and they will could still score a perfect 1000, while the school's 4- or 6-year graduation rates will take a hit.

So, with the understanding that a team's APR should be HIGHER than that of the school sponsoring that team, let's look at that data.

If you look at APR scores for other schools and compare their football team's APR performance against the graduation rate of the student body at large, you'll see that the APR always outpaces the university graduation rate at four years and either continues to outpace it, matches it, or barely falls behind it at six years. EXCEPT AT BYU. 

Specifically, look at 4-year football APR scores ending with 2010-2011 for BYU, Utah, and every school in top 10 football APRs in 2010-2011 per Brett McMurphy/CBS.

Below find each school listed, followed by three numbers in this order: (1) Most recent four-year APR score (corresponding graduation rate); (2) The nonathlete student population's four-year graduation rate; and (3) The nonathlete student population's six-year graduation rate.

All APR data comes from the NCAA.

All of the four- and six-year graduation rates come from about.com, except the service academies, whose rates I retrieved from forbes.com.

Clemson: 988 (92%), (50%), (77%).
Northwestern: 995 (97%), (86%), (94%).
Navy: 973 (82%), (86%), (86%).
Georgia Tech: 974 (83%), (31%), (79%).
Rutgers: 982 (88%), (53%), (77%).
Air Force: 980 (87%), (77%), (78%).
Boston College 977 (85%), (87%), (91%).
Duke: 989 (93%), (89%), (95%).
Boise State: 989 (93%), (6%), (26%).
Middle Tennessee State: 983 (89%), (16%), (46%).
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Utah: 966 (77%), (22%), (58%).
BYU: 932 (55%), (30%), (77%).

I bolded the outlier stats unique to BYU. Of those top academic programs (and Utah) analyzed beside BYU, eight of the eleven football teams has a better four-year graduation rate than its sponsoring university's six-year rate. Of the three who don't, their APR rates are within 4, 6, and 2 percentage points, respectively, of their schools' six-year graduation rates. BYU football's APR is 22 percentage points off the six-year rates of the general BYU population. Your theory is: 

[A]cademic standards shouldn't drop APR unless [programs] are relaxing admission standards for athletes.

And:

The [BYU football] coaches must be accepting players with lower academic standards than they are in the other sports.

If your theory is correct, does that mean BYU has a bunch of academically inept football players while football players at other schools are whiz kids? No. Even the most rabid Bronco-hater could not reasonably believe that Bronco has not figured out by now what BYU's academic standards are and what caliber of student-athlete is needed to meet them. What could explain the distinction between BYU's challenging academic environment and those at Duke, Northwestern, and the Academies? What does BYU football have in large numbers that other football teams do not have? Student-athletes leaving school in large numbers after their freshman year to serve missions.

Maybe I read all of your posts too fast, but I didn't see that you gave me any reason to believe otherwise.