The Super Bowl, the most crassly commercial event in American sports, remains notably Spartan in one respect: Compared with other major sporting events, it bombards viewers with few advertising messages while the players are on the field.

True, the 90 million people who watch the Big Game on Sunday will hear repeated references to the Pepsi halftime show and the Cadillac Most Valuable Player Award.

And they'll probably notice the Motorola headsets on the coaches' heads and catch glimpses of the Reebok logos on the players' uniforms.

Yet even as many sports leagues and events embrace advertisers who seek mentions during broadcasts, the National Football League has been stiff-arming them. Already a platform for the most expensive 30-second ads on television, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league is wary of overwhelming fans with too much advertising clutter during the Big Game.

"We work very hard to limit the number of companies that appear on the field," McCarthy said.

In a sporting landscape increasingly littered with ads, don't expect the Super Bowl to begin painting sponsors' names at midfield or selling naming rights to the pre-game coin toss.

That's not to say the Super Bowl broadcast is a commerce-free zone. Far from it. Joyce Julius and Associates, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based firm that tracks sponsorships, calculated that GM, Ford and Toyota received $48.9 million worth of "in-game" exposure during last year's Super Bowl broadcast.

Much of that went to GM and its Cadillac Escalade, Joyce Julius said. As the game's MVP, the Pittsburgh Steelers' Hines Ward was presented with an Escalade.

In all, GM received $33 million worth of exposure during the game, thanks to graphics touting Cadillac's sponsorship of the post-game show and the game's MVP award. ABC's broadcasters mentioned Cadillac 21 times.

Ford, which owns the naming rights to the stadium in Detroit where the game was held, reaped $13.6 million.

And Toyota took home $2 million for a mention during the first half.

Still, Joyce Julius' Eric Wright said the NFL has shown restraint in selling the Super Bowl.

"If anything, the NFL has been a little slow to go that way," Wright said.

Contrast the NFL's approach with that of other events. Viewers who tuned in to the recent Australian Open finals couldn't miss the prominent Nike swoosh on Maria Sharapova's visor. Winter X Games fans continually saw the names of Jeep and Schick in on-screen graphics.