Comments about ‘Doug Robinson: Forget tradition, it's all about the ad money now’

I teach in the public schools and have thought about asking administration if I could get a travel agency or an airline to sponsor my foreign language classroom.

Doug, your comment about road signage being everywhere holds for Utah county and the Wasatch front. Out here in the mid-west they are few and far between. I am always stunned when I fly in and can hardly see the mountains from I-15.

Doug, really? The "traditionalist" in me remembers (gosh, it was like it was just last season, and the hundred years before that) that every baseball park below the majors plasters the outfield fence with ads from everything from bail bonds to ice cream parlors. I could swear that every luxury box at the ESA has a corporate logo on it, too. Even in your favorite sport, I see that it's now the "ING New York City Marathon." Hm. An American marathon sponsored by a Dutch bank? How European.

And for the record, the Manchester United jersey DOES have the team name on it. In soccer, even in leagues that don't have a sponsor on the jersey front, the team name (or logo) is on the badge that covers the player's heart; it's for that badge that he plays (thus you sometimes see goal celebrations where a player will tap the badge, or pull it up to kiss it). The sponsor is there to pay the bills, but the badge is what you play for.