'Haves' and 'have nots' even applies to the classroom 

	Myles Brand announced Wednesday that 99 teams at 65 different Division I schools will be subject to scholarship reductions. AP
	Division I-A football teams that lost scholarships due to poor 2003-05 APR scores Average I-A score: 930 Team APR Scholarships Temple 837 9 Middle Tenn. St. 852 5 Toledo 853 6 Western Michigan 878 5 Buffalo 878 3 New Mexico St. 886 2 Hawaii 898 5 Northern Illinois 905 2 Teams are penalized one scholarship for each player that left the team while academically ineligible, up to a maximum 10 percent of available scholarships.
	Division I men's basketball teams that lost scholarships due to poor 2003-05 APR scores Average D-1 score: 927 Team APR Scholarships New Mexico St. 756 2 Louisiana-Monroe 802 1 Md.-Eastern Shore 811 2 Centenary 813 2 Hampton 827 2 South Carolina St. 833 2 Louisiana Tech 838 1 Prairie View 838 1 Louisiana-Lafayette 840 1 East Carolina 843 2 Cal-Poly 848 2 Florida A&M 856 1 Kent State 856 2 Sacramento St. 858 1 DePaul 865 1 Jacksonville 867 2 Teams are penalized one scholarship for each player that left the team while academically ineligible, up to a maximum 10 percent of available scholarships.

To paraphrase NCAA president Myles Brand, there is a "clear message" to be taken from the organization's first ever set of Academic Progress Rate penalties, and it is this:

Take that, Temple football. We're on to you, Centenary basketball.

Big-time college athletics has always had a clear demarcation between the "haves" and "have-nots" (branded in recent years by the terms "BCS" and "non-BCS") on its fields and hardwoods. Based on Wednesday's NCAA report -- which docked scholarships from 99 sports teams at 65 schools nationwide for failing to reach an acceptable rate of academic retention the past two years -- the discrepancy apparently applies to the classroom as well.

None of the eight Division I-A football teams cited by the NCAA hail from one of the six BCS power conferences, while only one such program, new Big East member DePaul, was among the 15 flagged in men's basketball. (Arizona, Arizona State, Kansas and Texas A&M are still appealing their results and could well show up on the final list.)

This peculiarity would seem to contradict the widely-held belief that the nation's big-money football and basketball factories are the ones making a mockery of academics. If you believe this report, the real problem lies in places like the MAC (Toledo, Western Michigan, Buffalo and Northern Illinois underperformed in football), the WAC (Hawaii and New Mexico State) and, most notably, at historically black colleges like the MEAC's Florida A&M, Hampton, South Carolina State and Maryland-Eastern Shore.

Brand would have you believe that the absence of high-profile teams from the list is an indication that the APR, in its second year of existence, is accomplishing exactly what it was intended to do. "Our goal is not to sanction teams but to change behavior," said Brand, "and we're starting to see positive change in behavior in terms of academic achievements of student-athletes." Indeed, several major programs -- including UCLA, Oregon, Ohio State and Alabama football, LSU, St. John's, Kentucky and Louisville basketball -- improved their scores enough from last year to this year to avoid sanctions.

All that really tells us, however, is what we already knew: That the UCLAs and the Alabamas of the world have far more resources at their disposal than the Hamptons and New Mexico States.

Numerous times during their teleconference with reporters Wednesday, Brand and Hartford president Walter Harrison, chair of the NCAA committee that devised the APR, repeated some variation of the following mantra: "The message [to schools] should be pretty clear," said Harrison. "Recruit students who are capable of doing the academic work at your institution, and then provide them with enough support to succeed. That doesn't strike me as very difficult."

Of course it's not very difficult, if, like Ohio State, with its sold-out 100,000-seat football stadium and 20,000-seat basketball arena and a share of the Big Ten's lucrative television and bowl contracts, you made $89.7 million in athletic revenue last year. While the overwhelming majority of those dollars go toward scholarships, coaches' salaries, recruiting and facilities upkeep, the school is also able to employ 16 staff members, including six full-time academic counselors, at its Student Athlete Support Services Office.

By contrast, Toledo's athletic department, one of those penalized Wednesday, has three full-time staff members in its academic advising department. The obvious suggestion would be to hire more, but that's easier said than done when your athletic budget is a more modest $14.8 million. "It's more difficult for schools in our position to find funding for tutorial support and summer school," said Brian Lutz, Toledo's assistant athletic director for compliance. "It's a challenge to find enough hours in the day for our academic advisors to devote to all the student-athletes that require attention."

As for recruiting, if the APR is dissuading coaches from recruiting academically risky prospects, we've yet to see the evidence. As detailed in a recent New York Times expose, basketball teams like George Washington and Mississippi State had no problem signing players who drastically improved their high school grades at the 11th hour by attending fraudulent prep schools.