Poll: Does your paper/station use bowl sponsor's names on first reference?

Yeah, unless they officially change the name of the game, it's the Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl...

If your paper refers to it as FedEx Orange Bowl or the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, your SE should be slapped...

 

Slightly OT, but at my previous stop at a top-50 paper, the local top-10 women's basketball program hosted a tournament; it was something like the "MEGA-EXCELLENT VIDEO GAMES Women's Tournament." DSE then sent an e-mail saying not to remove the sponsor's name in copy. So we ran it -- in proper upper and lower case. Next day, DSE ordered us to not only run the sponsor's name but run it in all caps. ("It's their style.")

 

We don't run the sponsor's name unless it's part of the bowl name now, like Chick-Fil-A. Funny thing was listening to the acceptance teleconference of the team I cover. I thought the head coach had suddenly become a NASCAR driver with the way he kept dropping the sponsor's name every time he said the bowl's name.

 

Or he/she should get a nice commission from the ad dept.

 

I'm in the "we're inconsistent" mode, because we don't run it with the recognizable bowls like Rose, Orange, Fiesta, Sugar, etc.

I hate to rain on you Chick-fil-A/Peach guys, but I don't see how you can do that.

I'm not sure how you can call it something that is no longer a single part of the name. The only connection is there's still a peachbowl.com -- linking to the Chick-fil-A Bowl.

It's all very annoying, I'll give you that. And as I always say, style is style as long as you're consistent.

I just would have a hard time referring to something as something that no longer exists in any fashion.

 

No, unless it's the name (GMAC, Capital One, that chicken bowl.)

Hell, everyone still calls the one in Boise the Humanitarian Bowl anyway.

Several years ago the local team went to a BCS game. It was wonderful hearing the coach, who had difficulty correctly pronouncing the name of several of his own players, mangle the name of the corporate sponsor every time he mentioned the official name of the bowl.

 

Here is one reason I am asking (and I am being careful because I don't want my reasons for bringing this up to be misinterpreted or overblown). You will have to read between the lines, because I don't want to use words that are easily Googled or discovered by accident in a Web search.

I cover a team that will play in a big bowl. The team and the bowl are in my home state. My home state (and neighboring states) suffered last year from a big weather event, one you may remember. That storm damaged thousands of homes, many of which had the assurance of certain types of protection from the sponsor of this particular bowl. The bowl uses the sponsor's name as part of the title. Knowing people who paid money for years (decades, in some cases) but received only a fraction of what they should have to help them rebuild, I cannot stomach the idea of putting the name of the sponsor in my copy.

If my boss wants to add it or tell the copy desk to add it, well, so be it, but I cannot bring myself to type that company's name as if it belongs equally as part of the title of a game that has been an institution in my state for almost a century, most of that time without a title sponsor. On the streets you hear people talking about the game, not the such-and-such game. If I refer to a player looking at the scoreboard, I don't write "the Daktronics scoreboard," and in the case of bowls with traditional names and new or relatively new sponsors, I think the traditional name is what people know and use in common discussion. Of course, this has layers the other games do not.

I know some people will say "What good are you doing?" I know others will say "Everything is connected to something that did somebody wrong." I know. I know. I just can't do it. I can't put the sponsor's name in my story, not when I think it's insulting to my state how they treated my friends and neighbors. It only makes it worse that the game will be played in a certain stadium that became a symbol of the horrors of that storm.

I could say more, a lot more, but I won't, at least not now. I'm hoping someone who can understand my feelings will tell me they would feel the same way if they were in my position. I don't want to make a big issue of it (there's a column I'd love to write, but I doubt my paper would publish it), but I need a sounding board, and I respect many people here. I am trying to draw as little attention as possible to my dilemma (hence the carefully chosen language), but obviously to get some feedback I have to put this out there.

Thanks for listening.

 

I found it interesting last night that when odds for the games ran on the agate wire, they still referred to the Peach Bowl instead of the Chick-fil-A Bowl. I was advised to change it.

 

JD, I love where you're coming from. Gives anyone traveling to New Orleans an idea for a story when bowl time approaches. See what the little guy on the street thinks of the Sugar Bowl's sponsor. That's better than 100 stories about fans partying on Bourbon Street.

 

I get the "buy an ad" notion, but whether we like it or not -- and I fucking hate it -- if the bowl sponsor is part of the official bowl name, then you should mention it on first reference.

We can't just go around changing names whenever we feel like it. If that were true, you'd better freaking believe Marquette would be the Warriors in every reference if I had a chance to pick-and-choose which references I liked and didn't like.

Which is why first reference to the sponsor is appropriate, after that use what is the common reference. Sponsor not needed in headlines.

Not sure whether the traditional bowls include the sponsor in their official name or not, I know for years the Sugar Bowl did. Might have been one of the first. USF&G Sugar Bowl if I'm not mistaken.

Just curious how many of you come down on auto racing and golf events? If you're not using the sponsor name on first reference there, especially for an event that had a previous title, it's kind of hypocritical.

 

The only commodity a newspaper, magazine, web page, radio or TV broadcast has to sell is exposure.

When you give it away free, you not only depreciate the value of that commodity, you undermine the value realized by those customers who DO elect to pay for it, and you utterly remove any incentive for the freeloaders to become actual paying customers. Why pay for something they can get for nothing?

 

The summer race at Daytona will always be the Firecracker 400 to me, but I've made my peace with the sponsor name. Can't do anything about it, and many people would not get the Firecracker 400 reference.