I’m not a sports person, but I still hate it when corporations buy the naming rights to stadiums and arenas. Here in Boston, the Boston Garden was to be replaced by the Shawmut Centre, but Shawmut Bank got bought out by Fleet Bank, so by the time the construction was complete it opened as the Fleet Centre, which always made me think of enemas. It recently became the . I’m not sure when the change was made, but the arena history page on their site doesn’t even mention the current name:

On September 29, 1995, the old Garden closed its doors to the public for the last time with a nostalgic evening of entertainment. The following night, a spectacular gala was held at the sparkling new FleetCenter, to usher in a new era for sports and entertainment in New England. With many of the historical reminders from the old structure having now been moved next door to the state-of-the-art FleetCenter, the tradition of building memories begins again.

As far as I know, this is not the case with universities and their arenas. They’re normally named after some alum, a donor, or the school itself. I hope to be dead before I have a chance to find out that the team at some university are playing at “Snap Into A Slim Jim” Field.

University of PhoenixApparently, the reverse is possible, though. The (”the nation’s largest private university”) has bought the naming rights to the new home of the Arizona Cardinals (do they have cardinals in the desert?), who for the last 12 years have been playing at a college stadium in Tempe.

From the article:

“We are thrilled to be affiliated with the largest private university in America, one whose home base is in Arizona but that has national and international reach,” Michael Bidwill, the Cardinals’ vice president and general counsel said in a statement. “The new home of the Arizona Cardinals is distinctly Arizona, and so is our stadium partner.”

I haven’t spent a whole lot of time in Arizona, so I’m not sure what makes this new stadium “distinctly Arizona” — giant cactus instead of goal posts, maybe — but I don’t know if any of this is distinctly Arizona. The University is based there, but it has “campuses” all over the place, and the vast majority of its students are online. I expect the campuses are a floor or two of some office park. And are the Arizona Cardinals distinctly Arizona? Are the players from Arizona? Wasn’t the team formerly based in St. Louis, where they still have a baseball team that goes by the same name? If they wanted to be “distinctly Arizona” maybe they should have thought about renaming the team when they moved.

My main concern is that people are going to show up at University of Phoenix Stadium and wonder where the rest of the school is. Are the dorms behind the stadium?

No tags for this post.