Brent Schrotenboer

USA TODAY Sports

A highly caffeinated energy drink brand called “Xyience” recently launched an ambitious new marketing campaign in college sports media, including commercials on the Pac-12 Networks, the Big Ten Network and ESPN.

On Sept. 8, Xyience also announced it would be the headline sponsor of an exclusive interview show with the chairman of the College Football Playoff committee.

But the scope of that marketing campaign suddenly changed last week after questions from USA TODAY Sports about how such a drink squared with NCAA rules. Within two days, the interview show sponsorship was dropped. An online news release promoting the marketing campaign was erased from PR Newswire. And the Pac-12 Networks said it no longer would run commercials for the product, which could cause a failed NCAA drug test if consumed in large enough quantities.

“The Pac-12 Networks has specific advertising guidelines that generally align with the NCAA,” Pac-12 Networks spokesman Wes Mallette said in a statement. “We can confirm advertising for this product did air on two of our regional networks earlier this year. We will not run these ads going forward.”

Caffeine-stoked energy drinks have become commonplace in convenience stores and the hands of young adults on college campuses in recent years, with an advertising effort to match. But advertising for the products can cause drink companies and broadcasters to bump up against NCAA standards designed to promote a culture of good health, standards considered by some to be overprotective and out of step with the mainstream.

Xyience became the latest product to test the limits. Its line of fruit-flavored drinks contains ingredients that are considered impermissible or banned by the NCAA, even though they’re not illegal or unusual among dietary supplements. And though no NCAA rules were violated with the marketing campaign,the governing body's advertising guidelines also say that “most energy or stimulant drinks” are not permitted to be associated with NCAA events such as the Final Four but not including regular season football or most bowl games.

Those same guidelines place restrictions on beer advertising and companies associated with sports wagering, such as daily fantasy sports. Seven years ago, the NCAA killed a proposal to let 5-Hour Energy become title sponsor of the International Bowl in Toronto, leading that bowl to go out of business, said Don Loding, the game’s former executive director.

5-Hour Energy and other energy drink brands with similar ingredients have advertised during regular-season college games. They also remain popular among college students, some of whom use them to get through their academic workload. But athletes risk flunking a drug test if they have too much.

“It’s a bizarre relationship,” said Loding.

The marketing campaign

Xyience drinks contain caffeine and guarana, which the NCAA lists as banned stimulants at high doses. The drinks also contain ginseng, L-carnitine and taurine — substances that are considered impermissible by the NCAA, meaning that schools are not allowed to provide them to athletes.

Though such ingredients are commonplace among popular energy drinks, the NCAA has health and performance reasons for restricting their use.

Despite that, Xyience gained an advertising foothold tied to the biggest events in college football. Previously known as the official energy drink of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the brand declared bankruptcy in 2008 and was sold in 2014 to Big Red, a soda company in Austin, Texas.

Under new ownership, Xyience wanted to change its image.

“We wanted to shift to a platform that is more broadly appealing than mixed martial arts,” said Thomas Oh, senior vice president for Big Red, Xyience’s owner.

ESPN reporter Samantha Ponder was hired as a spokeswoman for Xyience last year and appeared in Xyience commercials.

Xyience aired ads more than 230 times this year through Sept. 12 on channels such as the Pac-12 Networks, Big Ten Network, ESPN and ABC. Nearly two-thirds of those ads airing on the Pac-12 Networks, according to iSpot.tv, which measures national TV advertising. Xyience spent an estimated $912,000 to air that many times, according to iSpot.tv.

On Sept. 8, the company issued a press release announcing an extended marketing campaign with Campus Insiders, the digital arm of the College Football Playoff and an online broadcast partner of several Football Bowl Subdivision conferences.

The marketing campaign included the "XYIENCE Digital-exclusive Interview with College Football Playoff Committee Chairman Kirby Hocutt,” starting Nov. 1 on Facebook. It also included a weekly football rankings show that showed the CFP logo next to the words “powered by Xyience energy drink.”

It was a smart marketing play — except for one factor. No matter how readily available energy drinks have become in grocery stores and gas stations, the NCAA still considers them bad for college athletes.

After an inquiry about the matter from USA TODAY Sports, the College Football Playoff told Campus Insiders to dissociate the CFP from Xyience. Gina Lehe, the CFP’s senior director of communications and brand management, said the CFP follows NCAA advertising guidelines and wasn’t aware that Campus Insiders had linked the CFP and Xyience in a sponsorship.

The interview show with Hocutt “is not something we can have sponsored in general and with that drink in particular,” Lehe said.

NCAA values

Mary Wilfert, associate director of the NCAA’s Sport Science Institute, gave an online presentation last week to athletic trainers and athletic department staff. One of the topics was energy drinks.

“The energy drink buzz is a false energy,” read one of the slides presented by Wilfert. “So-called energy drinks are essentially caffeine and stimulant delivery systems.”

It warned that too many of such drinks could contribute to gastric upset, sleep disturbances, heart palpitations and performance detractions. Instead, the NCAA wants to encourage athletes to eat “real food” and avoid having them consume unregulated supplements whose marketed benefits are questionable.

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The NCAA considers caffeine to be performance-enhancing and a health risk at high levels but allows for average dietary intake such as from coffee or cola. The NCAA drug-tests for it, and a urinary caffeine concentration exceeding 15 micrograms per milliliter would result in a positive test, according to the NCAA.

That corresponds with ingesting 500 milligrams of caffeine within two to three hours of competition, according to the NCAA, which is about three 16-ounce cans of Xyience (176 mg per can) and the equivalent of six to eight cups of brewed coffee.

This approach differs from World Anti-Doping Agency’s, which stopped restricting caffeine use in 2004, in part because of caffeine’s widespread social acceptance and because of its questionable benefits at high levels.

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Among other energy drink ingredients, Guarana, a plant, also contains caffeine. Taurine and L-carnitine are amino acids, which have been considered potentially performance-enhancing by the NCAA. Such amino acid products are impermissible for NCAA schools to distribute to athletes, but athletes are not drug-tested for them or banned from ingesting them.

Technically, that means NCAA athletes still can buy Xyience, Red Bull and 5-Hour Energy on their own and not get in trouble unless they drink too much of them, causing them to flunk a drug test because of caffeine.

“Three cans would be a lot,” Oh said, suggesting normal consumption of Xyience wouldn’t cause a flunked drug test.

Even so, NCAA advertising guidelines reflect NCAA rules and values promoting the health of its athletes. Such guidelines also limit beer ads to 60 seconds per hour during NCAA championship programming. Last year, the NCAA also barred daily fantasy sports companies from advertising during its championships.

The loophole

Energy drink and nutritional supplement companies still want to market to college sports fans and have found ways to do so.

AdvoCare, which makes products with similar ingredients, is allowed to title-sponsor the Texas Bowl because it’s called the “AdvoCare V100 Texas Bowl.” The V100 is a vitamin chew that contains no ingredients that conflict with the NCAA rules.

Red Bull and 5-Hour Energy have many of the same or similar ingredients as Xyience and have advertised during regular season college games, thanks largely to a loophole of sorts that probably isn’t meaningful to the average viewer.

NCAA advertising guidelines apply to NCAA-owned events such as the men’s and women’s basketball Final Fours and other championships. They do not directly apply to regular-season games or even the College Football Playoff, both of which are controlled by NCAA-member conferences or NCAA-member schools, but not NCAA headquarters.

Loding, who ran the defunct International Bowl, said 5-Hour Energy commercials were even allowed to run during his bowl game even though the NCAA forbid the drink to be the game’s title sponsor.

“There’s a fine line there, and certainly to the public’s impression, it makes no sense whatsoever,” Loding said.

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Though the FBS postseason is not an NCAA-run event, college football bowl games do require NCAA certification to exist.

The NCAA “has adopted certain policies regarding title, presenting, and in-venue sponsors of postseason football bowl games that receive NCAA certification,” NCAA spokesman Christopher Radford said in an e-mail. “However, advertising and sponsorship arrangements entered into by universities and conferences outside those contexts (e.g., regular season, conference championships, etc.) are not subject to NCAA review or approval.”

Technically, that means the College Football Playoff, conferences and their broadcast partners don’t have to honor NCAA advertising guidelines. But if they don’t, they’d essentially be saying they have different values than the NCAA.

“It’s easier for us to be in step with what limits have been established (by the NCAA),” Lehe said. “And our standards for their championship games fall on similar lines to what we would hope to practice with our game as well.”

ESPN and Ponder declined comment through a public-relations staffer. Campus Insiders and the Big Ten Network didn’t return messages seeking comment.

The NCAA’s position is still a little baffling to Oh, the marketing executive pushing Xyience. Since Red Bull entered the U.S. market in 1997, energy drinks have become popular among American consumers looking for an extra boost. Sales of energy drinks and shots are forecast to reach $17.3 billion in 2020, up from $11.2 billion in the USA in 2014 and $8.1 billion in 2010, according to market research firm Mintel.

“I know Red Bull advertises during college football, just like we did last year,” Oh said. “We’ve never talked to the NCAA directly. We’ve never looked into trying to sponsors an NCAA-type of event or championship. We’re just trying to shift our platform to college sports. We’re just an advertiser on those networks you mentioned, ESPN included.”

Follow sports reporter Brent Schrotenboer on Twitter @Schrotenboer. E-mail: bschrotenb@usatoday.com

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