CSS Sprite Navigation

I'm working on a theme for a client who's requested a navigation menu which would be best handled with sprite-based rollovers. I've deployed several Drupal sites and have built many sprite-based navigation menus, but I haven't yet brought these two particular skills together; it seems as if it would be an arduous and difficult process (for me, at least) to do this in Drupal, considering how it creates and populates its menus.