It's a part of attending a ballgame that's as familiar as coordinated chants or overpriced stadium food: During a break in the action, Jumbotron cameras focus on couples in the crowd, imploring them to kiss before thousands of eager spectators. Sometimes it's sweet. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's awkward.

It's oftentimes even downright presidential. The Obamas once smooched on a basketball game "kiss cam," as the segments are commonly known. Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalyn did it at a baseball game just last week, while George H.W. Bush and wife Barbara puckered up at an NFL game last year.

You likely won't see any such moments at Syracuse football games any time soon, though. The university suspended the kiss cam from the Carrier Dome, where it plays home games, after fan complaints that the tradition promotes "male entitlement" and unwanted sexual advances.

Syracuse's kiss cam was out of commission for its game this past Saturday against Central Michigan. That followed a letter-to-the-editor that a fan named Steve Port wrote to Syracuse.com.

"During the kiss cam break at the Syracuse game last weekend I saw some horrifying behavior that was met with cheers and applause from the crowd," Port wrote. "It made me sick to my stomach."

Port wrote he had seen two instances at a recent game in which the kiss cam focused on pairs of students who didn't appear to be in any kind of relationship. In both instances, Port wrote, the female in the pair was pressured or physically forced to kiss the male student next to her despite obvious objections.

"The instances I witnessed at the game encourage and condone sexual assault and a sense of male entitlement, at best," Port wrote. "And they are an actual instance of assault, at worst."

As Port also noted in his letter, his questioning of the kiss cam comes amid heightened awareness of the prevalence of sexual assault on many college campuses.

The letter has spawned more than 225 comments since it was posted Sept. 18. Some commenters applauded Port's stance and agreed with him. Others criticized him as over-sensitive, while still others said they did not recall seeing the events in question while at the game.

After the kiss cam was conspicuously absent from Syracuse's game this past Saturday, an athletic department official told Syracuse.com the promotion is on hiatus at least for now.

"We are taking the time to assess the concerns expressed in the letter to the editor. We discussed this with POMCO, the sponsor, and they supported that approach," Sue Edson, Syracuse's executive senior associate athletics director for communications, told the news site.

Meanwhile, that's not even the only kiss cam controversy to hit the state of New York this month. Major League Baseball's New York Mets used to do a running gag at the end of kiss cam breaks in which the camera would zero in on teammates from the visiting team. The team said last week it would stop the practice after fans complained of it being homophobic.