Another slow news day in the Mozilla World. Firefox 2.0 RC1 has been released and Wednesday’s nightly build of Thunderbird fixed bug 354829 (see Thunderbird 2.0b1 (20060926 Nightly Build) Problem). So something different, very different. This season the Arizona Cardinals moved to their brand new stadium in Glendale. Prior they had been playing at my alma mater Arizona State University’s Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe. For the past couple months it has simply been called the Cardinals Stadium. In August, Las Vegas based Pink Taco offered the Cardinals $30 Million for 10 years for the rights to call it ‘Pink Taco Stadium’. The Cardinals were not interested and ’sack’ the ‘Pink Taco’ Stadium idea, calling it a publicity stunt. Earlier this week the Cardinals announced the new name University of Phoenix of Stadium, a $154 Million for 20 years deal.
For those of you unfamiliar with the University of Phoenix, they are a private college with 39 campus in several US cities (including Phoenix) and a couple in Canada as well as online, operated by The Apollo Group. The school is designed for working professionals who seek to earn their degree while employed full time.
This naming is about as bad as earlier this year when the home of the Phoenix Suns, America West Arena was renamed to US Airways Center (USAC) as a result of the merger of the two airlines. That sounds more like a business park then an arena. Around the same time the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Bank One Ballpark (BOB) became Chase Field as a result of the merger between those two institutions. Chase Field isn’t too bad, at least it is an appropriate name for a baseball park.
I would have taken Pink Taco Stadium any day over University of Phoenix, but looks like we are stuck with the name for the next 20 years. Never has a professional sporting venue been named after a school. At least Pink Taco was something different and may be the Cardinals could have gotten a Pink Taco restaurant at the stadium out the deal as well. I will close with this outstanding comment made on the East Valley Tribune’s online forum: “Nothing like complaining of 15+ years playing in a college stadium to naming your new venue after a private university/school. I’m sure the NCAA will love playing thei Fiesta Bowl and now National Championship game in University of Phoenix Stadium.”
