The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded the College Sports Project (CSP) in 2003 to focus on academics and athletics within Division III. The CSP includes a longitudinal data collection effort comparing athletes to nonathletes at over 80 Division III institutions in the United States. This chapter draws on the CSP to highlight the challenges small colleges face when collecting data about athletics and academics and uses CSP analyses to illustrate the ways these data provide a comparative assessment of athletes' academic outcomes. These examples may also suggest the limitations of any single data collection effort, no matter how comprehensive, for explaining the multiple and varied educational experiences and academic performance of student athletes. As a backdrop for the discussion of the CSP, this chapter summarizes some distinguishing characteristics of Division III and its philosophies regarding academics and athletics. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)