Here are the college football teams who have the most graduates in 2017

According to a roundup of the teams themselves.

Via the National Football Foundation, with Power 5 teams bolded:

Northwestern identified the most graduates of any school responding with 18 players on their 2017 roster who are seeking a second diploma.

Other schools reporting a double digit number of graduates on their rosters included Coastal Carolina (14), Virginia (14), Cincinnati (13) Toledo (13), Central Florida (12), Alabama (12), Oregon (12), TCU (12), Kansas State (11), Maryland (11), South Alabama (10), South Florida (11), New Mexico (10), Texas Tech (10), West Virginia (10) and Kent State (10).

From the FCS, Sacred Heart has 13 players with degrees on their 2017 roster, and James Madison and Western Illinois each have 10 players with undergraduate degrees.

Texas A&M-Kingsville tops the divisional ranks with nine players on their roster who are pursuing a second degree.

The NFF calculates 954 players on college football rosters for 2017 already have degrees and are or will soon be working toward secondary diplomas.

Northwestern also scores highest among FBS teams on the NCAA APR’s metric, which attempts to measure academic progress and is also used to determine which 5-7 teams are eligible for bowl games. NU is followed by Air Force and Michigan.

Elsewhere, UCLA QB Josh Rosen argues that the current structure, which ties football careers to academia in a pretty forced way, does not work for many players.

Look, football and school don't go together. They just don't. Trying to do both is like trying to do two full-time jobs. There are guys who have no business being in school, but they're here because this is the path to the NFL. There's no other way. Then there's the other side that says raise the SAT eligibility requirements. OK, raise the SAT requirement at Alabama and see what kind of team they have. You lose athletes and then the product on the field suffers.

Many players succeed within this setup, and many don’t. Rosen has valid points about both the workload and admissions standards, even if Bama might not’ve been the perfect example team to choose. (Not singling out any specific team might’ve been the way to go, actually.)