Michigan State has crossed a line with a hideous sponsorship deal it announced on Thursday.
The Spartans announced that their men’s basketball team will have a presenting sponsor as part of their name. Seriously.
Yes, the basketball team will be “known throughout the Breslin Center as, ‘MSU Spartans Presented by Rocket Mortgage,'” the school said in a news release.
The sponsorship will also call for Rocket Mortgage branding throughout the Breslin Center and Spartan Stadium, which is where the football team plays.
Look, you want to put the Rocket Mortgage logo and name on team benches, clipboards and facilities, go right ahead and do it. You want signs hanging throughout the arenas? Please do so. But making a sponsor part of the name is where things should end. That’s where you’ve gone too far. That crosses a line of decency for what should be acceptable or not.
I understand that college athletic departments have been hit hard financially over the last year. But there still needs to be standards. Michigan State is showing they have none and that they have no shame by allowing this. They’ve completely sold out their athletic team beyond a reasonable amount.
One thing that has irked me to no end is seeing European soccer teams that don’t have a city, town or team name on the jerseys. How are you supposed to know who they are and what they represent? Who wants to wear a “Vodafone” jersey? I pray American sports leagues never end up there. The small patches on the jerseys are bad enough. But when you turn your entire jersey into an advertisement and make it part of your team name, you’ve lost all respect. That’s what Michigan State has done here.
