The American Medical Association (AMA) is paying for a series of ads in college newspapers calling on schools to stop accepting alcohol advertising during college sports events, the Associated Press reported March 9.

The ads, timed to coincide with the beginning of the NCAA basketball "March Madness" tournament, call on colleges to "stop the madness" of alcohol advertising aimed at youth. The ads appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education and student newspapers at Georgia Tech, the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, the University of Mississippi, and DePaul University.

"The truly insane thing about March basketball is all the money universities get from alcohol advertising," the ad says.

The AMA ad says the alcohol industry spent over $52 million on ads during college sporting events in 2006. An NCAA spokesperson said the association's rules limit alcohol ads to one minute per hour of broadcast and ban hard-liquor ads.

The Beer Institute contends that 89 percent of March Madness viewers are adults. "Sports fans tend to be beer drinkers and therefore we're going to try to advertise to that audience," said Beer Institute President Jeff Becker.

Richard Yoast, the director of the AMA's Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse, said alcohol ads during school sports events undermine campus prevention efforts. "Almost every college president would agree that heavy drinking is their major student health problem," Yoast said.