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Carlton: From Sun Dome to Beer Stadium: Don't let suds scare you

 
The University of South Florida Sun Dome will soon be called the Yuengling Center, after the beer company that bills itself as the nation's oldest. The ten-year naming deal was announced last week at a news conference.
The University of South Florida Sun Dome will soon be called the Yuengling Center, after the beer company that bills itself as the nation's oldest. The ten-year naming deal was announced last week at a news conference.
Published June 20, 2018

Am I missing something in the — pardon the expression — brouhaha over the renaming of the University of South Florida Sun Dome to the Yuengling Center? In trading a college arena's longtime name for that of a big-name beer brewed nearby? For ten years and a very large but undisclosed sum of money?

Okay, so maybe it'll take a couple of tries for those unfamiliar with this particular beer to have "I'm headed to the Yuengling to see the B-52s" trip off the tongue. (Hey, Ulele wasn't so easy to pronounce when the Tampa restaurant first opened. And you still hear tourists saying Why-bor for Ybor City and assuming the town of Lutz rhymes with nuts instead of fruits.)

But none of this is the problem with the Yuengling name soon to grace the place where the Bulls play basketball on USF's main campus in Tampa. Some have more sobering concerns:

Yuengling is an adult beverage. The soon-to-be former Sun Dome sits on a college campus that is home to many students who are not yet legal drinking age. The worry is that this new name will encourage young and malleable minds to start drinking sooner, and more.

I do not make light of underage drinking, or how colleges struggle with binge drinking, drunk driving and other serious fallout from a keg culture. I also get that advertising can have a subtle influence.

But I'm having trouble imagining young adults thinking: Well, I was on the bubble about this whole alcohol thing, but since they've named an arena after a beer, count me in!

Obviously, the problem is more complex. And the current emphasis on responsible drinking coupled with that zero-tolerance "drive sober or get pulled over" message seems a more thoughtful approach than worrying about what letters are on a building.

Now, there is the matter of making a buck by slapping the name of any business willing to pay on anything that stands still long enough. Or whether that particular name is appropriate for a place that's supposed to be about higher learning.

But the real world is monetized and that ship has sailed, particularly when it comes to stadium naming. We had a Tampa Bay Times Forum before an Amalie Arena — and by the way, how many people walking in to cheer for the Lightning do you think actually know from whence "Amalie" comes?

The Amalie Oil company, of course. (I looked it up.)

Remember the absurdity of the 1-800-ASK-GARY Amphitheatre? And the current snooze-inducing MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre? It's true that 800 number cannot be wrenched from your brain, but surely MidFlorida concert-goers don't wake up the next morning and immediately switch banks.

A detail in that Foam Dome deal that did raise an eyebrow at least with me: Even though we're talking about a public university, you don't get to know the price, believed to be upwards of six figures a year. The Sun Dome is a direct support organization shielded from public records law.

In conclusion, I predict that we will soon be referring to the Yuengling Center without much thought about it, as meaningless as saying Lutz like fruits.

It's all about the money. And a Rhodes Scholar Stadium just wouldn't bring in the bucks.