A Company That Runs Prisons Will Have Its Name on a Stadium

[dixiegrrrrl]

In Fla.
Figures.
This over weening commercialization of sports is nauseating to me.

In recent years, where stadium naming rights could be sold, universities and professional sports teams have sold them — to airlines and banks and companies that sell beer, soda, doughnuts, cars, telecommunications, razors and baseball bats. This led to memorable examples like Enron Field, the KFC Yum! Center and the University of Phoenix Stadium.
On Tuesday, that trend took another strange turn when Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton, firmed a deal to rename its football building GEO Group Stadium. Perhaps that pushed stadium naming to its zenith, if only because the GEO Group is a private prison corporation.

For this partnership, there is no obvious precedent.

The university’s president described the deal as “wonderful” and the company as “well run” and by a notable alumnus. But it also left some unsettled, including those who study the business of sports and track the privatization of the prison industry. To those critics, this was a jarring case of the lengths colleges and teams will go to produce revenue, of the way that everything seems to be for sale now in sports — and to anyone with enough cash.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/sports/ncaafootball/a-company-that-runs-prisons-will-have-its-name-on-a-stadium.html?pagewanted=all

[frazzled]

1. Must read: Gail Collins, "Peculiar Naming Rights"

In her column today. Somehow she manages to make the appropriate points about our sick society, and make you laugh and cry at the same time. It's hilarious:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/opinion/collins-peculiar-naming-rites.html?hp&_r=0

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. good, I can use a laff...

thanks for the link...

[Earth_First]

2. If I were a student, I would be transferring in the fall ...and would not be quiet about it. n/t

[SalviaBlue]

3. The problem isn't the commercialization of sports ...

The problem is private for profit prisons... that is absolutely insane.

[frylock]

5. shouldn't be much longer before we start seeing advertisements..

singing the virtues of the prison industrial complex.

[Uncle Joe]

6. The nation is going to hell in a hand-basket, if anything for profit prisons should be illegal.

Thanks for the thread, dixiegrrrrl.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. You're welcome, Joe.

The story really got myhackles up. What a sneaky way to "normalize" for profit prisons.
Seems as if all kinds of skullduggery is slithering from the shadows and into the limelight.

[tarheelsunc]

8. I don't really understand this from the prison group's side...

Are they expecting to attract more customers? Or do they expect by getting their name out there, that more local governments will come to them for prison building?

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. Maybe just a way to "normalize" them as a business?

Don't get it myself.
But obviously they see some postive angle.

[MindPilot]

13. I didn't even know they existed until I had to post bond for a family member.

The place where he was being held was no longer the "Western Region Holding Facility", it was simply called "GEO" and I had to made several phone calls before someone explained to me what and where that was.

So maybe it is all about name-recognition. But it is not a name I want to see plastered all over.

BTW, a little off-topic, but if you ever have to bail out someone who is being held on federal charges, bring your deed of trust, because the feds don't take cash, just real property.

[MindPilot]

10. Your tax dollars at work :(

Every penny that GEO makes comes from taxes. They have enough left over after running the prisons that they can buy stadium naming rights.

Seems to me that should be on every fiscal conservative's radar as an example of some of the most blatant waste of taxpayer dollars imaginable.

[HiPointDem]

11. +1

[KamaAina]

12. But will the nearby University of Miami follow suit?

[MindPilot]

15. CCA is in negotiations at Penn State

[MindPilot]

14. I heard that their mascot is an Owl

And the stadium will now be known as Owl-catraz.

[dixiegrrrrl]

16. **Groan****