First of all, 1.1 percent may be the number of jocks who accidentally marked the wrong answer on the survey. It’s hard to imagine any football players being paid money to throw a game in a day and age where information is readily available and oddsmakers carefully monitor betting trends for misconduct.

There’s simply too much risk, and not enough reward, to try anything fishy.

With that in mind, the NCAA might be better off focusing its attention on another vice. This one is not only more troubling than sports betting, but is one the organization can do something about.

Betting on sports may hurt a student’s pocketbook, but alcohol can kill.

Although the NCAA stakes out a pious stand on sports betting, it looks the other way when it comes to beer companies helping line the pockets of its members. Despite calls by the American Medical Association and others to ban beer advertising on televised games, the NCAA has no problem allowing the ads to be targeted toward impressionable minds.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit group that campaigns against beer ads, says 500,000 students suffer alcohol-related injuries every year, and some 1,400 die because of alcohol.

Meanwhile, beer companies spent $52.2 million in 2003 alone to try to convince those watching college sports to drink their brands.

“Alcohol is the biggest problem on college campuses and yet they accept money for helping to promote beer drinking,” said George Hacker, the center’s director for alcohol policies. “There are a lot of people very uncomfortable with that.”

The NCAA has so far resisted growing pressure from some of its member institutions to drop beer ads during March Madness. And it stands mute while the ads run during college bowl games.

There’s a reason for that, and it’s a big one. The NCAA has a $6 billion contract with CBS that it is not going to risk by asking the network to eliminate beer ads.

Going after sports betting is easy. The schools don’t have a piece of that action.

Eliminating the hypocrisy in the NCAA will be a lot tougher.

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