Alcohol Ads in NCAA Sports Targeted

Duke's DeMarcus Nelson (21) tries to shoot over North Carolina State's Gavin Grant, left, in the first half of a first round game of the Men's Atlantic Coast Conference basketball game Thursday, March 8, 2007 in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux) (John Raoux - AP)

"Wisconsin has a heritage associated with beer drinking," Nagy said. "We haven't had a lot of community sentiment that we should discontinue the alcohol partnerships we have."

Wisconsin, however, took part in the decision to prohibit beer and alcohol ads from the Big Ten Channel, a new national sports TV network, Nagy said. "It's a step," he said.

The American Medical Association's fight against alcohol ads during NCAA games isn't new.

In 2002, the doctors' group criticized ads funded by Anheuser-Busch featuring college team mascots, and in 2005, the group sent a letter to NCAA Division I board members requesting a ban on alcohol print and broadcast ads linked to sports events.

The AMA maintains that alcohol ads undermine efforts to prevent campus binge drinking and alcohol-related deaths, accidents and sexual assaults, said Richard Yoast, director of the Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse for the American Medical Association in Chicago.

"Almost every college president would agree that heavy drinking is their major student health problem," Yoast said.

Yoast applauded schools that have written sports broadcast contracts to exclude alcohol advertising. "The whole thing revolves around money," Yoast said.

Yoast acknowledged an error in the AMA's ad. The ad claims that alcohol industry spending of $52 million on college sports advertising in 2003 was "more than twice the amount spent on non-college programming." Yoast said the ad should read "more than twice the percentage spent on non-college programming."

He said the mistake was inadvertent and "doesn't change the problem."