The NIU football team will lose two football scholarships, according to the Academic Progress Rates report released Wednesday by the NCAA.

The report is used to identify schools with athletes who are not achieving scholastic performance standards and penalizes the programs with a loss of scholarships.

A total of eight football programs were penalized, including five MAC schools. Temple was the biggest loser with nine scholarships lost, followed by six from Toledo, five from Western Michigan, three from Buffalo and two from NIU. The other schools losing scholarships are New Mexico State, Hawaii and Middle Tennessee.

A total of 99 Division I teams from 65 universities will lose scholarships for not reaching academic performance standards, which is less than 2 percent nationwide.

The penalties were handed out disproportionately to the MAC. The ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Southeastern and Pac-10 conferences did not lose any football scholarships and only saw seven total teams get penalized.

The APR serves as a measure of each school’s academic eligibility and retention of student athletes. On a scale of 1,000, the APR for a program must be below 925 in order to avoid penalties. An APR of 925 equals about a 60 percent graduation rate.

In addition, 17 Division I basketball programs lost scholarships, including the MAC’s Kent State.

Eight schools are still in the process of being evaluated: Arizona, Arizona State, Northern Arizona, Kansas, San Diego State, San Jose State, Texas A&M and Tulane.

The NCAA will send warning letters to historically poor academically performing schools next year and those schools also could face loss of scholarships in 2007-08. In 2008-09, a ban from postseason play could occur.

NIU Athletic Director Jim Phillips and NIU football coach Joe Novak could not be reached for comment as of press time.