Article:Will NCAA Ban Beer Ads?

The NCAA is going to be faced with an interesting decision at its next meeting. Letters requesting that the NCAA place beer on its list of products that cannot be advertised during college games has been sent to Myles Brand signed by 60 Division I presidents, 240 athletic directors and 101 football and basketball coaches. The current list of banned products includes cigarettes, guns, nightclubs and gambling. The petition was sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and copies of the letters can be found here.

The list of signatories is interesting in a number of respects. You will see presidents of some well known and elite academic institutions (Stanford, Georgetown) and some notorious party schools (Florida State, Tulane) and the school with the largest athletic budget in all of college athletics, Ohio State. It is a broad-based and movement that hopefully will find a receptive audience among the NCAA Executive Committee.

It has already found a receptive audience in one conference. The Mountain West Conference does not carry beer commercials on its network, the mtn. It also doesn't carry commercials for Viagra and similar products, which is a blessing for those few people who actually can receive the mtn. Declining Viagra and Cialis commercials would be a public service that I recommend that the Big Ten Network and the WWLS adopt immediately. Football and basketball fans would be forever grateful.