Tag: Sports, Games and Competitions

Branding Mastered IV

The BBC advised of this is an amazing decision – no doubt “facilitated” by “branding consultant”:

The Football League has changed the name of Division One to The Championship for next season. In addition, Divisions Two and Three will be re-titled League One and League Two as part of the rebranding. League chairman Sir Brian Mawhinney said: “The Championship’ is a term steeped in the history of the League. “Reclaiming it for our leading clubs will place a new enhanced emphasis on its status at the pinnacle of our competition,” he added. Mawhinney added: “Not only is it a gateway to the Premiership, it is one of Europe’s leading league competitions, in terms of the standard of football being played, the high quality of stadia and the numbers of supporters attending.”

Just to clarify, there are four professional leagues in England in fitba. The first will now be called The Premiership, then The Championship, then Division One, then Division Two. Scant years ago, they were called divisions one, two, three and four. How could this be done sillier, how can they end up with the fourth highest league being assigned the word “One”?

Red Sox on TV

One of my all time favorite TV stimuli is the one that says “Sox on Fox”. When I had a house, I could have a dish that got me Fox TV from Boston on which I watched the Red Sox play. The show was promo-ed as “Sox on Fox”. Dr. Seuss was a native of Massachusetts, albeit from the westerner end at Springfield, so the homage is just. While near Springfield last weekend, I got my Red Sox hat – the Boston Rob one with the velcro back. That takes a bit away from it. Like the little Nike logo. I can carefully snip away the embroidered Nike swoop, like we used to with logo dress whirts when they first came out in the early 80s.   I can’t, however, snip away the Boston Rob-ness.

I have had many hats. As a diaper wearer, I had a Toronto Maple Leafs minor league hat. I sat in the Fenway bleachers in 1973 in my Expos hat watching Luis Tiant. I still have a wool Atlanta Braves retro one I bought in the early ’80s because I did not wear it as much as the lemon yellow Bardall oil mesh hat I loved so much then. I often admired the 1970’s red hat, black brim Sox hat but never had one. But I like my new all black one. Nike was good enough to even put a lable inside that says “Genuine Merchandise”. You gotta love it when it is genuine.

All of this to point out that despite my lack of access to Sox on Fox and Gerry Remy‘s dulcet tones, this weekend and next I get to watch the Jays get smoked over and over by the Sox, starting tonight with a homestand in the second awfulest place on earth to watch baseball – the Skydome. The worstest apparently is in Montreal but I have never been. After sundown tonight, I will hunt out a fading WTIC 1080 for the later innings audio to synch with the Jay’s homie video.

Ugly Jerseys

I do not often endorse a business here but, as I have written before, one I love is Premiershirts which as I understand is a hobby turned business from a nice friendly guy in Oldham, England. I noticed he got a mention in an article in this month’s When Saturday Comes – which should cause a good bit of free buzz -and that he has updated his Hall of Shame of the worst jerseys of all time including Coventry’s 1970’s brown get up shown right.

Seized Back just like Belfour

It is the season for injured bloggers but with the playoffs coming up that is to be expected. Think I will spend the day laying on the floor taking numbing drugs. It’ll pretty be like my 1980s, I guess.

Speaking of playoffs, there is a move afoot to continue the grand tradition of my internet hockey pool via this digital venue – really only as a link to the site of a friend who administers on a real live interactive data base what I started in 1996 or ’97 with a pad of paper and email. We will speak on that later p’raps.