COLLEGES EYE RESTRICTIONS ON PROMOTIONS BY BREWING COMPANIES

But Lucrative Advertising On Televised Games Is Unlikely To Be Stopped

When McKinley Boston was director of men's athletics at the University of
Minnesota-Twin Cities in 1994, he negotiated a contract with the Miller
Brewing Company that allowed the brewer to install signs in the
university's athletics arenas and to use Minnesota's mascot, the Golden
Gopher, in the company's advertising.

That contract, worth $150,000, expired in June. This past fall, the
university's athletics department asked Dr. Boston, who is now
vice-president for student development and intercollegiate athletics of the
university system, about signing a similar contract, worth $225,000, with a
different brewer.

This time, he said No.

"Being in a new position, I was able to get a big-picture view of what was
happening," says Dr. Boston, who announced his decision last month. Over
the fall, that picture included the alcohol-related deaths of students at
the Louisiana State University and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology; the need for 14 students from the Twin Cities campus to enter
alcohol-rehabilitation programs; and an increase in alcohol-related
assaults on that campus.

"I just personally felt like it was the right thing to do," Dr. Boston says
of his decision. "I just felt like we were sending students a mixed message."

Because the university's negotiations with the Minnesota Brewing Company
were almost complete, however, he chose not to leave the brewer in the
lurch, and recommended shortening the deal to one year instead of three.
The decision still must be approved by Mark G. Yudof, the system's president.

Administrators in Minnesota are not the only ones rethinking the
relationship between college athletics programs and the alcoholic-beverage
industry.

Last fall, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill joined Baylor
and Brigham Young Universities in the small group of those that refuse
alcohol advertising in their arenas and on radio broadcasts of games.

In November, California State University at Fresno removed from its arena
an inflatable silver tunnel that resembled a can of Coors Silver Bullet
beer after a player had left the men's basketball team to deal with a
substance-abuse problem.

And last month, the Big Ten and Pacific-10 Conferences failed in an effort
to persuade the city of Pasadena not to sell beer at the Rose Bowl.

"I think it is unnecessary and inappropriate for institutions of higher
learning to lend themselves to this kind of advertising, especially given
the kinds of alcohol-abuse problems that most campuses are facing," says
William DeJong, director of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and
Other Drug Prevention.

Jeff Becker, vice-president for alcohol issues at the Beer Institute, a
lobbying organization sponsored by the industry, says that beer companies
abide by a strict marketing code, and that people like Dr. Boston are
"making a connection between beer signs and alcohol abuse that doesn't exist."

The National Collegiate Athletic Association does not collect information
on its members' relationships with the beer and wine industries. Frank D.
Uryasz, the N.C.A.A.'s director of sports sciences, says most colleges do
not sell beer or wine in their athletics facilities. "But when a college is
using an arena off-campus, then you are going to see beer sales," he adds.

Postseason football games are a case in point. According to Dave Jacobs,
general manager of the Rose Bowl Operating Committee, beer is sold at 15 of
the 16 bowl games recognized by the N.C.A.A. Only the Fiesta Bowl, which is
held on the campus of Arizona State University, does not sell beer. More
than 103,000 fans attended the 1997 Rose Bowl, and purchased about 30,000
beers.

Many institutions that do not sell beer at their games have a commercial
relationship with a brewing company or a local distributor, says Wally
Renfro, director of public affairs for the N.C.A.A. Typically, these
relationships involve arena advertising, but at Fresno, Miller Lite has
sponsored a men's basketball game this season, and the team's coach, Jerry
Tarkanian, appears in advertisements for Budweiser. The university will not
say how much money it receives from the arrangement, in which the beer
company receives extra advertising and a high profile in the program.

Elise Lenox, director of alcohol-abuse prevention at Stanford University,
says she understands the pressure on athletics directors to increase their
budgets. "We are fortunate to have Pepsi as a major sponsor, and that is
the only sign you see on our scoreboard," she says. "But I think that for
schools that aren't well-resourced, it is very tempting to accept the
industry's money."

The prevalence of beer advertising aimed at college students, she argues,
creates "the impression that everyone is drinking all the time," and leads
some students to assume that if they are not drinking alcoholic beverages,
they are missing an important part of collegiate social life.

But Jason Giebel, a junior majoring in advertising at the University of
Minnesota, disagrees. "At our age, we don't get intrigued to try everything
we see," he says. "Just seeing a sign for a beer is not going to make you
want to take a drink."

In 1989, Richard D. Schultz, who was then executive director of the
N.C.A.A., met stiff resistance, both from within the association and
without, when he attempted to reduce the visibility of alcohol advertising
in college athletics.

"The beer companies were major advertisers for some of our members, and we
got a lot of pressure from breweries other than those that sponsored the
telecasts," says Mr. Schultz, who is now president of the U.S. Olympic
Committee.

He succeeded in persuading the membership and the television networks to
lower the proportion of beer-and-wine advertising to one minute per hour on
telecasts of N.C.A.A. championships; restricting the space devoted to beer
and wine in the programs and scorecards for N.C.A.A. championships to 14
per cent; and prohibiting beer companies from sponsoring championships.
"That was as far as we could go," he says, "because of the networks.

"They had concerns about their contracts with advertisers, and their sales,
and certain First Amendment rights that they believed everybody had."

CBS did not respond to telephone calls. Ronnie Faust, director of corporate
communications at ESPN, which also televises N.C.A.A. championships, says
the network does not "divulge financial figures."

Mr. Schultz left the N.C.A.A. in 1993, and the issue has not been pursued
by his successor, Cedric W. Dempsey.

The restrictions have had little impact on the amount of alcohol
advertising on college-sports broadcasts, because the rights to
regular-season games are controlled not by the N.C.A.A., but by individual
conferences, most of which have no restrictions on such advertising.

Because the beer industry is perhaps the biggest commercial supporter of
college athletics, the development of restrictions is unlikely, says Joel
Nielsen, associate athletics director at Wake Forest University.

"For the networks to turn them away, that would be cutting their own
throats," he says. "And for the conferences to request it would be
shortsighted. Your rights fees would go way down."

Without some kind of collective action, however, Ms. Lenox of Stanford says
it will be difficult for individual institutions to break "this link that
has been established through the years between sports -- collegiate and
professional -- and beer."

A bill sponsored by U.S. Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II, a
Massachusetts Democrat, would restrict the content of alcohol advertising
between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. Its aim is to minimize children's exposure to
cartoon-like advertising characters such as the Bud-Light penguin and the
Budweiser frogs. The measure is currently before the House Commerce
Committee, and an aide to the Congressman says its prospects are "not
particularly bright."

Nor is the issue on the N.C.A.A.'s agenda. "I find it hard to imagine that
our membership would begin to develop legislation that on a national basis
would restrict the members in their relationship with advertisers," says
Mr. Renfro of the N.C.A.A.

That pleases Mr. Becker, of the Beer Institute. "If you had to choose the
best audience in the world for a beer advertiser, it is 21-to-34-year-old
men who participate in sports and are avid sports fans," he says.

The fit with the college-football audience, he says, is "hand in glove."

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Chronicle of Higher Education