Victor Kiam Redux

At the risk of sounding like Dennis Miller, what with an obscure reference in the headline, a news item from yesterday bears mention in this space.

The Arizona Cardinals (football team) announced that their cutting-edge stadium -- which opened in August -- will be known as University of Phoenix Stadium. Official AZ Cards propaganda link here.

Way back when, in an ad campaign that was kitschy before kitschy was cool, Victor Kiam claimed to have liked the Remington Micro-Screen (a brand of electric razor, sortof like the Fusion meets Mach3 meets Dyson vacuum cleaner) so much that he "bought the company."

UoP likes the new stadium so much that they bought the naming rights. (If my math is correct, 7 million a year for 20 years is a lot of money.)

What does this mean for kids who are going to college? Or for parents? Or the education community?

We've decided to come up with a list of winners and losers. Here goes:

Winners:

• The University of Chicago. Time to revisit the Cardinals' link to the City of Chicago (where they played a long time ago) AND the University of Chicago. Legend has it that the Cardinals wanted to be called the Maroons but someone screwed up the laundry and bleached the jerseys. They came out a shade of red that was, well, Cardinal in color.
• The People of Arizona.
• Distance learning.
• Shaquille O'Neal.
  

Losers:

• The geographically challenged. University of Phoenix Stadium is the home of the Arizona Cardinals, who play in Glendale, Arizona. They used to play in St. Louis, Missouri and, before that, Chicago. Cardinals are also a baseball team in St. Louis. The Cardinal is the nickname for Stanford. And UoP has campuses everywhere.
  
• The guy who has to cost-justify this expenditure. Public school, private school, not-for-profit, for-profit: $140MM is a lot to spend on name recognition.
• The poor sportscaster who gets to interview Mr. Phoenix about how great it is to be a part of such a great new building and a wonderful team. Having a PR background, let me take a stab at what the quote would be: "We see great synergies between an up-and-coming team, a gem of a new stadium, and a ubiquitous online higher education presence."

Oh, and a quick list of things that aren't going away anytime soon: naming rights to pro stadiums, naming rights to University buildings, University of Phoenix and its for-profit cohorts.