Graduation rates of local college athletes compare favorably to national averages, even though NCAA statisticians don't make allowances for athletes who leave school to serve two-year church missions.

An NCAA report released Monday says 76 percent of the 91,051 Division I athletes who enrolled in college from 1995 to 1998 graduated within a six-year period.

Among the five Utah schools with full-fledged Division I programs, several had sports where all athletes graduated, including the Ute gymnasts, skiers and soccer players; and several schools' tennis, volleyball and golf programs.

However, an athlete who redshirts one year and spends two years away from school on a mission would be expected to take seven years to graduate, so those athletes are not counted as successful graduates in the NCAA statistics.

That accounts for the lowest graduation rate among Utah schools — 40 percent for BYU's football players, more than two-thirds of whom serve two years as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The study leaves a statistical anomaly when applied to BYU's athletic programs, according to associate athletic director Duff Tittle. "Because our cycle is often seven years, not six."

Because many BYU athletes serve LDS missions, a recruiting class that enters BYU for a sport like football has a lower path set. For instance, if BYU signs 30 football players in a year and 20 go on missions — either before enrolling or after one semester — they are thrown out of the data set.

"Then, say two of the remaining 10 transfer, that leaves eight," Tittle explained. "If one of the remaining eight leaves school for anything including an honor code violation, as seen of late, that leaves seven football players to base a path set statistic on and that leaves the data skewed."

The same thing applies to a sport like golf. If BYU signs three golf recruits and two go on missions, if the remaining player decides to turn professional one year short of his fourth season of eligibility, BYU's path set for graduation rates in golf is zero.

In 2004, BYU's football recruiting class of 28 included nine players who will have transferred, eight following honor code violations, one who didn't show up (Eddie Scipio), two who quit and six who went on LDS missions. That left 10 athletes for the path set study.

Tittle said BYU conducts its own graduation rate study that includes walk-on and scholarship athletes dating back to 2001.

"Based on seniors in the class we used for graduation, the rate is between 85 and 89 percent the past four years," Tittle said.

Conversely, Weber State had by far the best Utah numbers among the major sports: 89 percent of football players graduated; 86 percent of men's basketball players; and 92 percent of women's basketball players.