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What's in a name? To the corporate world, more than we would like
An obscure race called the "Pork, The Other White Meat 400" was held last weekend in Atlanta. You can look it up. It was an ARCA race, last race on the schedule, and Kerry Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt's oldest son, was the winner and I don't know about you, but I think it opened up an entirely new area of sport and commercialism. The Pork, The Other White Meat 400. Beautiful. The greedhounds, not content with staking claim to the stadiums and venerable championships of our free-enterprise land, from Pac-Bell stadium to the tennis Bausch & Lomb Championships to the ill-fated Poulan Weedeater Independence Bowl, apparently have more to offer us. Forget the simple names. Let's put a jingle in the new titles. The Winston Cup can become the Winston Tastes Good Like a Cigarette Should Cup and the various Pepsi Centers on the map can become the Pepsi, The Taste More People Prefer, Centers and the Verizon Byron Nelson Classic can become, I don't know, the Verizon, Switch Your Telephone Business To Us, Knucklehead, Byron Nelson Classic. We can have Mmmm-mmmm Good Campbell Soups arenas and the Chevy, Like A Rock, Open and the AFLAC, Quack Like a Duck, AFLAC, AFLAC, AFLAC championships. You can say it all won't happen, like maybe you said golfers would never wear silly hats on their heads to make money or baseball players would never charge money for their autographs or center ice and the boards would never be sold for advertising, but you probably know better. Pork, The Other White Meat 400. We have seen the future and, again, we know it is not pretty. Leigh Montville's commentaries appear regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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