It was a move that baffled sports marketing experts: Florida Atlantic University struck a deal in February to name its football stadium after a private prison company.

But after more than a month of backlash from students, faculty and human rights groups, the GEO Group Inc. pulled out of the $6 million deal with Florida Atlantic on Monday, citing the “distraction” it had caused for the company and the university.

“What was originally intended as a gesture of GEO’s goodwill to financially assist the University’s athletic scholarship program has surprisingly evolved into an ongoing distraction to both of our organizations,” GEO Group chairman and chief executive George Zoley said in a statement released by the university on Monday.

Soon after the deal was announced in mid-February, it got attention in national news outlets and garnered a segment on the Colbert Report. Citing lawsuits against the company and federal reports detailing horrible conditions at a GEO-operated youth prison in Mississippi, host Stephen Colbert quipped: “This criticism is just one of the downsides of paying millions of dollars to have people pay attention to your company …. People start paying attention to your company.”

The GEO Group is based in Boca Raton, Fla., just a few miles from Florida Atlantic University. Zoley, the company’s chairman and chief executive, received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the university and was a former chairman of the board of trustees.

The university had been seeking a corporate sponsor for two years to pay down the debt on its newly built stadium, and the GEO Group pledged to pay $6 million over 10 years in exchange for the naming rights.

Student groups at Florida Atlantic quickly coalesced against the GEO Group Stadium deal, dubbing the facility “Owlcatraz” — a play on the university’s mascot, an owl. They staged a sit-in outside the university president’s office in February and demanded that university leadership organize forums and discussions about GEO’s human rights record.

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