On the field, the University of Virginia football team fared well last fall, winning nine games.

In the classroom, the news wasn't as good for the Cavaliers. In part because of the poor grades they earned in the fall, four football players were suspended from U.Va. in January, including starters Jameel Sewell and Chris Cook. Another starter, Jeffrey Fitzgerald, withdrew in February because of an academic issue and has since transferred to Kansas State.

Asked Monday if the academic casualties were aberrations, Cavaliers coach Al Groh said he hopes "that would be the case, but we took the circumstance very seriously. When a player comes, he should be expectant of success, and we all have a role in that. Every hallway that he walks down in the school, we want a high level of success."

Groh told reporters at the ACC Football Kickoff that his team's grade-point average for the spring semester was its highest for a U.Va. football team "in the last nine years," though he didn't disclose the figure.

U.Va. spokesman Rich Murray, in an e-mail to The Times-Dispatch last night, said the university does not "feel it's appropriate to provide the grade-point averages you request, but please be aware the improvement in this area is a result of an increased emphasis within the program supported by the athletics administration"

"If [the football program] doesn't work the way that I want, I take the blame for it," he said. "But in the area of academics, I thought our academic-advising people have done a thorough and diligent job. It's the strongest staff that we've had at any point in time."

Four academic advisers work solely with the football team at U.Va. Groh attributed his team's improved performance in the classroom to diligence on "everybody's part. My part, the players' part. . . . We've always been diligent with it, but perhaps the [suspensions] got the attention of some players that maybe the adult talking to them [did not]."

Even so, Groh said, in the end players must commit themselves to their schoolwork, no matter how much academic support the school provides.

Two Cavaliers made the ACC's 40-player all-academic team for 2007: tight end Tom Santi and wide receiver Staton Jobe. To be eligible for all-academic honors in the ACC, a football player must have earned a 3.0 GPA for the fall semester and maintained a 3.00 cumulative average during his academic career.