This is my favorite month of the year: March Madness. As a Duke grad (hopefully that didn’t lose me too many readers), basketball is in my blood. And when I have spare minutes I am constantly checking out the latest and greatest news and analysis as my Blue Devils prepare for their next game in the NCAA tourney. Like many sports fans, I choose ESPN.com as my go-to website. But I was shocked and angered recently to see that ESPN is hosting advertising that uses the names and IQs of student-athletes. This is an offensive and likely illegal practice that must be stopped immediately.

I took the screen grab above from the bottom of an article about Duke’s basketball team. Note that one of the Duke players, Kyle Singler, is specifically mentioned in the ad. Further, his IQ is claimed. There are so many problems with this ad, but let’s focus on the main two: (1) an amateur student-athlete’s name is mentioned as part of an advertisement; and (2) the ad claims to know his IQ score, a very personal number that I guarantee Singler never provided to this company.

The ad comes from a program ESPN is running called “Quigo Ads.” It’s a copy of the Google AdWords model in that you can quickly create and place small ads according to keywords and only pay when they are clicked. As this Kyle Singler ad proves, the restrictions on content are very limited.

Shame on ESPN for allowing this reprehensible form of advertising to exist on its website, and for what? I can’t imagine that these tiny, hidden, idiotic ads get more than a few bucks per week, likely a rounding error in the billions of dollars that ESPN rakes in each year from legitimate marketers.

I believe that publishers must take 100 percent responsibility for the advertising that is displayed on their pages. The national TV networks force advertisers to share proof of claims data before approving commercial runs. Even Google closely monitors legal regulations around the world and screens out ads that do not meet the standards.

ESPN is hurting the image of the very athletes that fuel its core business, including college athletes who don’t make a dime from the billions that they help churn out for ESPN each year. I will be writing to ESPN to register my unhappiness and I suggest you do as well.