Days after California showcased its new offensive weapons in the spring game, some welcome off-field news became official for the Golden Bears: The football program scored 997 of a maximum 1,000 points on the NCAA's annual Academic Progress Rate (APR) score.
That score pits Cal in a tie with Utah for the Pac-12's best mark, a monumental achievement for Sonny Dykes considering that the program's academic reputation was in tatters when he took over in 2013. The Bears posted sub-930 scores in consecutive seasons before Dykes' hiring, relegating them to the Pac-12 cellar.
This was a particularly troublesome black eye for an institution that is otherwise commonly ranked as the nation's top public university.