Collegiate values and bowl games
NCAA doesn’t follow own rules on sponsorships
The NCAA has pretty strict moral standards for advertisers and sponsors at college football bowl games, according to the organization’s postseason bowl handbook.
The 24-page document states that “pool halls” with adult entertainment are not permitted to be associated with these games. Casinos, beer, wine and other alcoholic products also are listed as “impermissible,” among other potential sponsors. The goal is to make sure the commercial and sponsorship activities of bowl games are “consistent with the values associated with collegiate sports,” as stated in the handbook’s second paragraph.
So then why do at least 20 of this year’s 40 postseason games list beer companies, liquor brands or casino companies as sponsors or partners on their websites?
Why does the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida, list at least seven hard liquor brands as “Chairman’s Club” partners?
And why is it permissible for the Las Vegas Bowl to be sponsored by Bud Light and several casino companies?
“Fair question,” NCAA spokesman Chris Radford said in an email.
With the 2019 bowl season set to begin Friday, critics say the answer involves money, appearances and a sliding scale of morality – all part of larger controversies in which the NCAA struggles to balance its wholesome educational mission with its member schools’ thirst for sports revenue.
The NCAA does not operate bowl games, but it does certify their right to host NCAA teams and ensures they meet minimum standards of governance. The NCAA president and his staff even have the authority to rule about “whether sponsors/advertisers associated with Division I bowl games meet the principles stated” in the handbook, according to the handbook.
But what the NCAA says about its standards can be quite different from what it actually does, said David Berri, a sports economist at Southern Utah University who has studied NCAA issues.
With bowl games, the NCAA confirmed that, “in practice,” it generally only enforces these standards on sponsorship displays that could be seen by one of two audiences – viewers on television or NCAA athletes at bowl-related events. So then why doesn’t this match what the NCAA published in its own handbook, especially when NCAA staff and various committees that include school representatives often rigidly enforces precise rules for the eligibility of athletes?
The NCAA official who helps oversee the bowl policies, Ty Halpin, declined to comment, Radford said.
The NCAA’s Division I Football Oversight Committee has input on the handbook and is led by chairman Shane Lyons, the athletics director at West Virginia.
“The language (in the handbook), now that you’re throwing it out there, probably could be cleaned up a lot more,” Lyons told USA TODAY Sports.
Lyons said changing entertainment options have led to changing attitudes about casino and alcohol sponsorships, along with alcohol sales at college events. As game attendance has declined in recent years, schools have become concerned about drawing fans to games when they could just stay home and watch them on large televisions without waiting in line to buy beer.
This year the Southeastern Conference voted to lift a ban on stadium alcohol sales, allowing those schools to join others that already allowed it despite concerns about alcohol abuse. Last year, the NCAA’s Division I even voted to allow alcohol sales at NCAA championship events such as the Final Four.
At bowl games, the same NCAA handbook allows alcoholic drink sales, just not alcohol sponsorships. Premium draft beer at the Rose Bowl in January sold for $16 each.
“A lot has changed,” Lyons said. “I’m not even sure when this (handbook) was written and last updated.”
‘Hoping people aren’t going to notice’
Lyons said such changes are reflected in how the NCAA regulates casino and alcohol sponsorships for bowl games in practice, if not according to its written virtues. In practice, the NCAA allows them up to a point so that they’re “secondary” sponsorships.
For example, “impermissible” sponsors aren’t allowed in the titles of the games. The NCAA therefore would not permit a game to be called the Avion Tequila Bowl, even though Avion Tequila is listed as a “Chairman’s Club” partner on the Gator Bowl website, along with Elijah Craig Bourbon, Tito’s Handmade Vodka, Wiser’s Whisky, Beefeater London gin, Admiral Nelson’s rum, Daily’s Cocktails, Budweiser and at least eight wine companies.
Gator Bowl CEO Rick Catlett said these partners are submitted to the NCAA annually.
“They (NCAA staff) see it every year,” he said. “I know it’s never been flagged because they never even bat an eye in certifying us.”
Sponsors that are considered “impermissible” also are not allowed to be “in-camera view” – meaning not on prominent signs in stadiums where they can be seen on television during games. Therefore, viewers shouldn’t be able to see a big stadium sign for the Greektown Casino-Hotel at the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit on Dec. 26, but they can find it listed as a sponsor on that bowl game’s website.
“We just make sure that if there is a sponsor in question, that the studentathletes aren’t going to see it, and nor will you see it on television,” said Mark Neville, CEO of the San Diego County Credit Union Holiday Bowl in San Diego.
He said this is how his organization is allowed to have Coronado Brewing Company as a partner, which provides products for hospitality suites and helps with other community support of the game.
Such sponsorship displays are not viewable on TV but could include exposure benefits on less-visible platforms, such as fundraisers, the printed game program or the bowl’s website. Though these smaller sponsorships generally aren’t as lucrative, they still face the public and can help bring in money for the bowls through cash or trade.
And that’s part of the equation, said George Belch, a marketing professor at San Diego State.
Bowl games need revenue to be able to pay conferences and schools to play in them, as well as other operational costs, including paychecks for bowl executives who often earn well over $300,000 annually.
Meanwhile, the schools want bowl games to be financially sound, helping ensure that every eligible team with a minimum record of 6-6 has a bowl destination.
Berri, the sports economist, said the parsing over which alcohol and casino sponsors are viewable by whom misses the larger point.
“If your handbook says this and you’re still doing it and your excuse is, ‘Well, we’re not doing it as big as we could be,’ I’m sorry, what the hell is that?” Berri said. “Clearly you’re doing this because you’re hoping people aren’t going to notice and people make money off of this.”
By putting out a handbook that rejects certain businesses as sponsors on moral grounds, Berri said the NCAA can exert regulatory power over bowl games and attempt to reflect a virtuous “collegiate model.”
Simultaneously, by still allowing these “impermissible” businesses to be sponsors out of view of television cameras, he said the NCAA can help bowl game operators continue to generate revenue up to a point that wouldn’t appear to be too noticeably hypocritical.
“I think they’re going to try to look the other way as much as they can,” Belch said.
‘What does the camera see?’
About 10 years ago, the NCAA even killed a proposal to let 5-Hour Energy become title sponsor of the International Bowl in Toronto, leading that bowl to go out of business, said Don Loding, the game’s former executive director. It didn’t matter that 5-Hour Energy is non-alcoholic.
What mattered is the appearance of conflict for a potentially high-profile sponsor. Such drinks contain a stimulant – caffeine – on the NCAA’s banned list, which technically could cause an athlete to flunk a drug test if consumed in large amounts two to three hours before competition.
For similar reasons, another energy drink brand also was denied as a title sponsor for a bowl game this season, said Wright Waters, executive director for the Football Bowl Association, an industry trade group.
Waters said that bowl game operators understand that NCAA sponsorship rules generally only apply to the question of “What does the camera see?” in the game itself, he said.
He cautioned against reading NCAA regulations “like a New York lawyer” would.
“You’re looking at it from 30,000 feet, and sometimes the NCAA rule book is written from 10 feet,” he said.
The NCAA bowl handbook states that its principles are “applicable” to title sponsors, presenting sponsors and invenue sponsors that might be seen on TV. For those sponsorships, the NCAA requires bowls to submit them to the NCAA for approval.
The handbook also says its policies are designed to encourage those major sponsors that support the NCAA’s ideals, and to “exclude those advertisements and advertisers (and others who wish to associate with Division I football bowl activities) that do not appear to be in the best interests of higher education and student-athletes.”
To flex the NCAA’s power over bowls, the handbook even says it has the authority to “review any document specifically related to the bowl game,” including “title sponsor and other corporate contracts.”
These guidelines are similar to advertising guidelines for NCAA-operated championship events such as the Division I basketball tournaments. The NCAA has allowed limited advertising at those events for malt beverage, beer and wine products that “do not exceed 6% alcohol by volume.” Some NCAA members recently have pushed to modify such limitations for NCAA championships, which could open the door for more revenue.
In late October, the NCAA board of governors – the association’s top policymaking body – also considered changing advertising restrictions for NCAA championships to “permit sponsorships by liquor, beer or wine companies,” according to the board’s meeting minutes.
But the board rejected that notion, holding NCAA championship events to a higher standard than member schools, which have been allowed to have beer sponsorships. In 2017, for example, the University of Texas announced that Corona Extra would be an official sponsor of the Longhorns. The College Football Playoff also has an official beer sponsor, Dos Equis, even though the Playoff includes bowl games subject to handbook rules.
“The rules that govern individual schools are different than the rules that NCAA championships are governed by, and the bowls get caught somewhere in between,” Waters said.
He said this has been a concern for bowl games, because they are certified by the NCAA but not operated by them.
ESPN, which owns the Las Vegas Bowl and several other bowl games, said in a statement, “All of our current bowl sponsors have been reviewed and approved by the NCAA.” It declined to comment further.
Catlett of the Gator Bowl said the “partners” on his website, including the liquor brands, would be required to pay at least $9,500 in cash or trade to the game’s nonprofit parent organization. They then get benefits in return, such as tickets to the game.
‘How did they get our logo?’
Many liquor brands also didn’t return messages inquiring about their relationships with bowl games. But two listed sponsors that did respond distanced themselves from the bowl games, seemingly underscoring the sensitivity involved because of the language in the handbook.
In Detroit, the vice president of marketing at the Greektown Casino-Hotel, Ryan Bufalini, said he didn’t know the Quick Lane Bowl had identified the casino-hotel as a sponsor on the bowl’s online sponsor page. The casino-hotel’s logo is listed right under that of tire and auto company Quick Lane, the game’s title sponsor. Bufalini said bowl spectators often stay at his hotel-casino near the game but that it is not a “financial sponsor.”
“How did they get our logo?” he said. “They must have just lifted it off of something. Yeah, we’re not sponsoring it in any way.”
A message seeking comment from the Quick Lane Bowl wasn’t returned.
On the Gator Bowl website, one of the Chairman’s Club partners is Daily’s Cocktails, a Harvest Hill Beverage company. That company’s marketing director, Greg Riley, said, “We are actually not a sponsor of the Gator Bowl Game.” Instead, he said a distribution partner, Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits, collects product donations for the game’s parent organization. Those donations support fundraising receptions throughout the year, he said.
“Our sales team annually donates four cases of Daily’s Non-Alcoholic Mixers (Bloody Mary & Margarita) to the association,” Riley said in an email. “The proceeds raised from these charity events help ‘Send A Child To The Game’ and numerous other programs.”
In return, the Gator Bowl is listing Daily’s Cocktails as a partner on its website, which includes the company’s logo with a martini glass in place of the letter Y. When viewers click on it, they are sent to a website that asks them to verify their age is at least 21 before entering.
Viewers then can see a variety of the company’s alcoholic drinks and mixers, as well as where to buy them.