Can’t imagine Soldier Field by other name

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

The great thing about having your stadium named the United Center is you get the financial benefits of corporate sponsorship without sacrificing a pretty cool name for an arena.

That’s not always the case when you sell the naming rights to your sporting venue. Any list of stadiums and parks and indoor arenas with names that don’t exactly trip off the tongue or hardly seem like homes for sporting gladiators would have to include:

 The Mall of America Field at Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, the TD Garden in Boston, Bank of America Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion in Seattle,  Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington, W. Va., PETCO Park in San Diego, Save Mart Center at Fresno State in California and legendary Whataburger Field in Corpus Christi, Texas.

And no offense to this particular fast-food maker, but does any athlete in Boise, Idaho, ever say, “When you walk into Taco Bell Arena, you can just feel the tradition”?

Sacred ground

Some White Sox fans still refuse to call U.S. Cellular Field anything other than “Sox Park” or “Comiskey Park” or in some cases, “Co-MIN-skey Park.”

Granted, “the Cell” isn’t exactly up there with “The House That Ruth Built” or “The Friendly Confines,” but then again, the House That Ruth Built was torn down and supplanted by a newer version across the street, and the Friendly Confines are at least as friendly to the opposition as they’ve been to the home team and fans over the last century-plus.

Usually, I just say “Sox Park” or “The Cell” without giving it a second thought. I don’t make reference to Comiskey Park any more often than I reference Woolworth’s, Kroch’s & Brentano’s, Pacific Stereo or Suncoast Video.

Times change. Names change.

Big bucks for naming rights

It’s hardly a new tradition, but these days owners routinely sell naming rights to stadiums for millions, sometimes tens of millions of dollars a year.

Citigroup pays the New York Mets $20 million a year to play in Citi Field.  And then the Mets go onto the field and waste that money.

Of the 32 teams in the NFL, about two-thirds either have naming-rights contracts or are actively seeking such deals. But as the Sun-Times’ Sean Jensen reported, none of the major candidates for mayor of Chicago would advocate selling the naming rights to Soldier Field. (Or as the same people who call Comiskey “Cominskey” call it: “Soldiers Field.”)

The spokes-folks for Rahm Emanuel, Gery Chico, Carol Moseley Braun and Miguel Del Valle all said essentially the same thing: the candidates don’t believe you can put a price on patriotism.

No doubt they really feel that way, but there’s also the unspoken reality that any candidate advocating a name change for Soldier Field would be committing political suicide. “Hey everybody, here’s an idea to raise money: We’ll change the name of Soldier Field to Groupon Stadium!”

Uh-huh.

Wrong + stupid is a deadly equation.

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Even if someone tried to do an end-around with a naming-rights deal that would give us the Bank of Plenty Gridiron at Soldier Field or Soldier Field, brought to you by the Superduperstartup.com Playing Surface, there would be protests, calls for boycotts, damning statements from veterans and political leaders and the president of the United States. Anyone who brokered such an agreement would soon be looking for a new job while his successor tried to undo the  deal and worked on damage control.

There may come a time when Wrigley Field (which after all was named after a chewing gum company), the United Center, U.S. Cellular Field and Allstate Arena all have different names.

I can’t imagine Soldier Field ever being anything other than Soldier Field.