Know what helps pumps millions into the university athletics umbrella NCAA? The same thing that pumps millions into magazine publishers and criminal defense attorneys: booze! Though the NCAA supposedly has the interests of college athletes in mind as it sucks in huge broadcasting revenues for its games — they've got a $11 billion deal with CBS — they also allowed alcohol sponsors to advertise during games. This upsets some people, like college presidents, who pointed to beer sponsorships during the NCAA men's basketball tournament "embarrassingly prominent." Too bad there's nothing the NCAA can do! Or so it says.

Current rules limit alcohol advertising to 60 seconds per 1 hour of programming, and only booze with alcohol content below 6 percent is allowed, which means we're talking Bud Light and Miller Lite and not Ciroc and Ketel One. It's allowed for companies like Anheuser-Busch and SABMiller to sink some $30 million into the 2007 NCAA March Madness basketball championships.

Worth noting: The NCAA prohibits beer sales at its games, and any stadium advertising for booze must be covered up during broadcasts.

Meeting yesterday, in part to address concerns raised by member universities as recently as April, the NCAA's exec committee agreed that beer ads were not "appropriate," but also that they "have tried [limiting alcohol advertising] once before in this country and it didn't work very well." So they're not changing anything, and delivered this excuse: They've "taken a very sensible, very rationale, very conservative approach and we've asked that any company that advertises (alcohol) during our games continue to include the message 'drink responsibly' on its ads."

Indeed — because asking consumers to "drink responsibly" will do wonders to counter the boozy marketing messages seen during the games encouraging tailgating and then driving home from the game.

[AP, TV Week]