Claremore Daily Progress

Sports Columnists

June 6, 2009

Terrell Lester on naming rights

TERRELL LESTER

Sports Editor



Are you ready to cheer for the HydroHoist Hillcats? The Zebco Zebras? No? Well, neither is the next guy.

But this being the recessionary times in which we live, anything is possible, little is left to chance.

A decade ago, sporting fans were turning up their collective noses at the mere mention of something called the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. The AT&T; Cotton Bowl? Not a chance. The Poulan Weed Eater Bowl? Stop!

Still, sports types can be an adaptable bunch, if not a forgiving bunch.

Some things just grow on you.

But doggone it, this name game just continues to grow.

Take last week, for example. First, the Phoenix Mercury then the Los Angeles Sparks of the WNBA — that’s the women’s pro basketball league that operates within the NBA family — sold their faces, if not their souls, to the minions of marketing.

The Mercury joined hands with an Arizona-based identity-theft protection company, LifeLock. The Sparks paired up with Farmers Insurance Group.

Both firms purchased the branding rights to the teams’ jerseys.

The company name will dominate the front of player jerseys and warm-up suits. Phoenix and LA are the first to finalize such agreements following the WNBA’s decision to make this opportunity available for its teams and sponsors.

“I think that the purist in me, or any sporting fan, or coach, or player ... kind of cringes at that thought,” Rogers State director of athletics Wren Baker said about the WBA moves.

The prominent placement of a sponsor’s name on a uniform is viewed as ground-breaking ... unless one is traveling the NASCAR circuit, or teeing it up on the pro golf tour. Who can see the car for the decals? Golfers and sponsor-emblazoned polo shirts go together like The Masters and CBS.

But team sports — baseball, football, golf — are held to a higher standard. Aren’t they?

“I don’t think you will see many colleges want to do something like that, because a huge, huge part of why colleges field athletic teams is that the public relations and media side of it brings such national attention to the university,” Baker said.

“I recently read where the University of Florida reported its applications for admission were up 10 or 15 percent in those years when they won football national championships. So, obviously, if they were the Chevrolet Gators, as opposed to the University of Florida Gators, that would change,” he said.

“But I think you will see more and more naming rights on buildings, and on floors, and on the chairbacks and the benches, and on the coaches’ clothes, and those kinds of things, as people struggle to make ends meet in collegiate athletics.”

Baker thought about the introduction years ago of corporate names to collegiate icons such as football bowl games.

“Now, you don’t even think in terms of that,” he said. “And isn’t the national trophy for college football still the Sears Trophy?

“I think it’s a matter of time before, instead of having the East Rutherford Regional (in basketball), you’ll probably have the Tostitos Regional That’s In East Rutherford, or something along those lines,” he said.

Rogers State might not see, or even accept, a big marketing plan aimed at renaming its athletics teams, but the school does have hopes of building an on-campus facility for basketball, its flagship sport.

And with that, Baker says, naming rights for facilities are acceptable ... even encouraged.

“Sports marketing is certainly very, very powerful,” he said.

It can even trickle down to the high school level.

A big football rivalry game, say a Claremore and Oologah, Claremore and Owasso, could be promoted by corporate sponsorship.

“As teams continue to have to find revenue sources, you’ll see more and more of that,” Baker said.

But the Safari Joe’s Wildlife Conservancy Zebras of Claremore?

Maybe not.

Still, that was probably the reaction when Chick-fil-A entered into the football bowl-sponsorship game.

Logos on team jerseys? Would it be any more disconcerting that an extended arm, or two, resembling an artist’s palette?

Wren Baker knows where it all started.

“Without question, Nike jump-started sports marketing and made it what it is today,” he said. “I don’t recall any major marketing in conjunction with sports, especially collegiate sports, before Nike.”

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