WHAT'S IN A NAMING RIGHT?

Stadium naming rights are a touchy subject. Well, in some cases.

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Fortune named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" six straight years. The Astros later paid $2.1 million to have this sign taken down.

The Boston Garden was replaced in 1995 by a building that changed names before the Celtics or Bruins ever played a game there. When the good people of the Hub broke ground, the building now named the TD Banknorth Garden was the Shawmut Center. But before the arena even opened, Fleet Bank bought up Shawmut Bank and slapped "Fleet Center" on the building. Unfortunately, just a year later, Fleet was bought up by Bank of America. (Remember when banks bought banks and the government didn't have to buy banks?) Bank of America is HQ'd in Charlotte, so a Boston arena wouldn't do for namesake purposes. So the arena owners bought the naming rights back, which they took to auction. It was messy. There was once a two-day period in which "Yankees Suck Stadium" was the legal name.

All in all, it has changed names 34 times. Thirty-four, in under 15 years.

The week, in the midst of their faled NLCS bid, the Dodgers announced they might sell off the naming rights to their bullpens, of all places. Red Bull appears to be on board. In our most recent issue, we list the top naming rights deals. Here's one: Barclays will pay the Nets $400 million for the naming rights to their new arena. The deal lasts 20 years.

That's if Barclays can raise up to $32 billion in upcoming weeks to escape a government bailout in England. Details.

By now, fans have come to see the whole business of naming rights as a bit of a joke. Wrigley Field gets a pass, because well, the guy was a man, not just a stick of gum, but we scoff at AT&T Park. If it's audibly pleasing, well, it's just different, somehow. Still, the whole enterprise can get ugly. The erstwhile Boston Garden debacle was long before the recent witch hunt to keep Allianz off the new home of the Jets and Giants in New York. In that case, some papers pointed out that Allianz had Nazi ties. Well, they did business in Germany during the 40's, but in the world of sports brands, they weren't exactly flying solo.

Wrote Terry Lefton in Sports Business Journal last week:

"Adidas namesake Adi Dassler was a Nazi party member. Adidas is one of the NBA's largest sponsors, and also one of MLS's biggest corporate patrons. … Adi's brother, Rudolf, was also a Nazi; he started Puma after walking out on Adi. … A Bayer predecessor also made gas that exterminated European Jews. MLB has a sponsorship deal with Bayer on behalf of its One-A-Day vitamin brand. … Volkswagen was born out of Hitler's idea for a "people's car," and later he helped build a factory for VW, which subsequently produced military vehicles. Now VW is intertwined with U.S. sports, most recently with a jersey sponsorship of MLS's D.C."

The Allianz deal ultimately fell prey to media whim, or, as it were, bad timing.

Keeping Godwin's Law well out of the picture, we can at least acknowledge that a dose of bad guy-ism has always been around in this game. Some situations are past us, some roll on.

Enron Field was still being built as the home of the Astros when in 2002 we all learned that the company's executives had essentially shredded the pensions of employees for their own fat returns.

Toyota has not one, but two namesake buildings. One is called Toyota Stadium, the other Toyota Park. Should we care that Toyota helped supply war machines for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II?

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Jay-Z and the Nets landed these guys for $400 million.

The Wizards, a team that once changed its name from the Bullets to encourage DC gangs to read Harry Potter, we assume, play in an arena once named after WorldCom. Unfortunately, the good folks leading that company, namely Bernard Ebbers, were nailed for hording assets while the company was involved in some $11 billion worth of fraudulent accounting.

The Tennessee Titans and Adelphia Stadium? Turns out a few good folks at Adelphia weren't so good. The guys who owned it stole $100 million from the company. Soon after, it was The Coliseum. It's changed again since.

The University of Missouri once hosted games at Paige Sports Arena. Paige was the daughter of a couple loaded donors. Turns out she could also pay to have her homework done. Again, name change.

And what do we make of all the stadiums named for companies that recently had to be gutted or sold off in tatters? Washington Mutual and Wachovia are already certain to lose their place on a stadium wall. Are their unscrupulous business practices to blame for their downfall? Are they somehow evil? Who sets the scale?

Despite the outcry, stadium naming business will go on. It's too important for franchises in their ever-increasing quest to make enough money to both compete and profit at the same time. They can't be faulted for such pursuits, just as the Giants couldn't be for flirting with Allianz. An important source of team revenue comes from the operation of stadiums and arenas that are often a gift from the taxpayers via the local legislature. Just as the fans will soon pay the price of general inflation as credit markets stumble and the value of the dollar remains in flux, so too will ticket prices continue inflating when stadiums need to be paid for, or even when stadium names have to come down because the company went out of business, or got hauled in front of a senate committee for fraud.

It's a shame too. It can cost at least a million bucks just to replace the sign.

Who has to pay for that?

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