In late August, my mother often gathered her children and loaded the family sedan. Once we had reached the local big-box retailer, she would whip out a massive list of school supplies.

Pencils, pens, paper, notebooks, folders. One by one, we tossed them into the shopping cart.

They weren't for us. My mother, an elementary school teacher in the Milwaukee public school system for more than 30 years, bought the items for the children in her class who couldn't afford them. It was a necessary gesture of good will. Her students -- many of whom lagged behind their wealthier academic peers -- depended on those resources, which their parents and inner-city school could not supply.

It's a common dilemma throughout the country. Three years ago, the New York Times reported that the average graduation rate in the 50 largest cities in the country was 53 percent, while the graduation rate in the suburbs of the same cities was 71 percent. The fragmented secondary education system tends to favor the affluent.

The best and the brightest have the upper hand in the American collegiate system, too. But average college students also have access to tools and resources that can help them earn degrees if they're willing to work hard. And the money tied to academic support in college sports often grants athletes another academic boost over the rest of the student body.

Within college athletics, the academic benchmarks established by the NCAA and the arms race that demands elite, eligible athletes have fueled the funding of academic extras on campuses across the country.

Foreign language centers, computer labs, tutors who travel with teams to games -- they're all exclusively accessible for many college athletes who need them. At major-conference schools, a struggling student raises his hand for help and educational specialists bombard him.

But that doesn't happen at Donald Sims' school. Mississippi Valley State's athletic director relies on an assembly of staffers and community members to help his university meet the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate, a barometer of a program's ability to retain athletes, keep them eligible and help them earn degrees.

MVSU's men's basketball program, which competed in the NCAA tournament in March, has been banned from postseason play in 2013 for failing to meet the NCAA's APR standard, a four-year average of 900. Four other programs from the pool of Historically Black Colleges and Universities have also incurred postseason bans for the 2012-13 campaign. The bulk of remaining bans were tied to schools classified as mid-major or Football Bowl Subdivision programs. Connecticut was the only program from a major conference that incurred penalties.

The financial challenges endured by some Division I programs that have struggled to meet the APR standards shouldn't create assumptions about their ability to comply, said Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice president of academic and membership affairs.

"We do have many limited-resource institutions who are absolutely having no problem meeting the academic requirement," Lennon said. "We have some resource institutions at the highest levels that have failed to meet some of these requirements."

But the APR has become a nightstick -- not a measuring rod -- that whacks some of the nation's poorer programs.

Sims refuses to complain or request lower guidelines, even though the chasm between his university's level of academic support resources and those enjoyed by his BCS peers is stark. He doesn't have any full-time staffers who focus on academics in the athletics department.

Nearby, Mississippi State lists 10 academic facilitators on its website. In her recent story on the APR, ESPN.com's Robbi Pickeral reported that NC State has 13 full-timers, 65 to 70 tutors and a handful of interns and monitors. The University of Texas spent $2.6 million on academic support for its athletes in the last fiscal year.

At Mississippi Valley State? There, the women's soccer coach and two track and field assistants double as academic support staffers who try to help MVSU's athletes stay afloat academically. Sims asks athletes with top grades to tutor their teammates when necessary, and he has requested retired educators to volunteer their time.

"We are working miracles here in the Delta," Sims said.

Pushing hundreds of athletes through the rigors of classwork, practice and competition with 28 full-time staff members monitoring 18 squads constitutes college athletics' version of turning water into wine, but Sims and his small-college colleagues do it every season.

"We don't have anyone full time [in academic support] that's 100 percent devoted to athletics," said Earl Hilton, athletic director at North Carolina A&T, where the football program has been banned from this year's postseason due to a low APR.

Despite billions of dollars in revenue floating throughout the collegiate landscape -- enough money to spur legitimate conversations about compensating players -- some schools that the NCAA penalized for their APR scores lack the financial capability to acquire resources that would help them reach the academic demands.

"I'm a realist. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer," Sims said. "No one is looking to help the poor. You've got to help yourself."

The NCAA recognizes the disadvantages that schools with limited resources must overcome.

Last week, the organization's board of directors, in consultation with advisers from various HBCUs, approved the $4.8 million Limited-Resource Institutions Grant Program Pilot, a three-year fund for low-resource schools. Universities can use that money -- a maximum of $300,000 per year per university -- to fulfill their academic needs.

The NCAA had previously established the Supplemental Support Fund, which provides grants ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 for specific institutions with resource challenges.

For Sims, the grant is not insignificant. He said he'll devote the money, if approved, to the academic support staffing that his department craves.

"We're looking forward to getting a portion of that money that the NCAA has set aside for low-resource institutions," Sims said. "That will help us out tremendously here at Mississippi Valley. … We owe academic success to all our athletes. I'm sure we could see some results within that period of time."

The NCAA has also offered a reprieve for low-resource schools. Under new standards, all programs must achieve a four-year average APR of 930 -- which projects to a 50 percent graduation rate, per the NCAA -- by 2016-17. But the NCAA has approved a gradual progression for schools with limited resources to achieve that standard.

Kudos to the NCAA for its effort to close the gap, but it's not enough.

Gerald Gurney worked as an athletic...