As March Madness Nears, NCAA Sends Out the Word on Its Trademarks

Sports Business Journal
March 8, 2004

The NCAA men's basketball tournament is less than two weeks away, which means the association's legal department and other staffers have entered their busy season in dealing with companies illegally using NCAA trademarks for March Madness promotions.

"It's not unusual for us to encounter 100 or so reports of an ambush," said NCAA associate general counsel Scott Bearby.

Most uses are inadvertent, and a cease-and-desist letter typically puts an end to the matter, Bearby said.

The NCAA, in hopes of heading off illegal use of its marks, usually sends out about 20,000 letters to vendors and businesses in the championship cities for both the men's and women's tournaments to warn of trademark infringement. The NCAA also runs a staff contest in which the NCAA employee who reports the most infringements will win a prize, usually a Final Four bag or some other nominal "thank you" gift.

Efforts by member schools and NCAA sponsors to report violations also help. Occasionally, Bearby said, he'll receive a letter from a local business that's ratting out a competitor.

WORK AHEAD FOR PLANNED BCS GAME: Presidents representing Division I-A institutions may have reached an agreement to add a bowl to the current Bowl Championship Series format in 2006, but a lot remains to be done between now and the start of a new agreement.

A memorandum of understanding providing for the game still must be signed, a process that could take three to four weeks, said Tulane University President Scott Cowen, one of the leaders in the effort to alter the existing postseason college football format. That memorandum, in addition to authorizing the fifth BCS game, would include agreements to improve access to BCS games for smaller I-A conferences, change the way in which the BCS is administered and increase guaranteed revenue to smaller conferences.
Tulane President Scott Cowen points the way toward changes in postseason college football.

Cowen declined to provide specifics on changes to the revenue-distribution formula, but he said the belief is the addition of a new bowl and other changes will result in an increase in the value of the BCS. Any additional revenue to conferences outside of the Big Six would come out of incremental gains in the contracts for the games, he said.

Cowen said it would be "many months" before the fifth bowl would be picked. Already, though, organizers for the Motor City, Gator, Houston, Alamo, Holiday, Peach, Citrus and Outback bowls have expressed interest in becoming the fifth BCS bowl.

COUGARS GET ACTIVE: The University of Houston has hired Active Imagination, a Houston-based sports marketing and design firm, to develop a marketing campaign that would launch with the start of the upcoming football season.

The campaign is intended to help reposition Houston's football team and the athletic department in general as Houston's "hometown team," said Devin Crosby, the Cougars' assistant athletic director for marketing.

The plan is to develop a campaign for football that can be integrated and used for other Houston athletics programs, said Adam Nisenson, owner of Active Imagination.

Active Imagination had worked on some smaller projects for the department before being tapped to create Houston's new campaign, Nisenson said. The company also has worked for the Houston Astros and Texans.

Crosby said the campaign aims to separate Houston athletics from the other sports choices in the market and ultimately increase support for Cougars sports. Specifically, the department has its sights set on doubling season-ticket sales in football from 5,000 last year to 10,000. Last season, the Cougars had an average attendance of 22,000 fans per game.