"There's no doubt that alums want sports to be presented from a pure approach," Staples says. "They like the fact that there's no signage. I don't think they want that to change."

Yet other schools say that alumni concern over sports advertising has ranged from sparse to virtually nonexistent.

"The older alumni might have had some complaints as far as taking away from the true sport of the game, but most people agreed that what Brandon [McNeil] had done was phenomenal for Dartmouth athletics," Carlson says. "The alumni have grown past that now."

Even officials from conservative schools such as Princeton and Yale say they receive little more than a single complaint a year from an alum about sports advertising.

In fact, Yrigoyin says alumni opposition to sports advertising will soon become a non-issue entirely.

"There's definitely a segment that would like to see it the way it used to be," he says . "But I think that kind of thing will change as the years go on, because young people who go to sporting events are so accustomed to seeing blatant advertising in games."

Filling the Seats

Officials at Ivy schools besides Harvard say that their athletic department's decision to advertise is not just based on money--fans are entertained by the corporate promotions and tie-ins.