Titans Add 20th-Season Helmet Decal

Photo by @MickeyRyan1045, click to enlarge

Paul here, pinch-hitting again for Phil, who has this weekend off. More NFL news yesterday, as the Titans added a helmet decal to commemorate the team’s 20th season under their current moniker.

You may have forgotten (in fact, I had forgotten) that this anniversary ordinal logo was originally released way back in February, prior to the unveiling of the team’s new uniforms. At the time, the team said the logo would be worn as a helmet decal, not as a jersey patch — somewhat surprising, given that they went with patches for their 10th and 15th ordinals.

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Old man yells at cloud: Braves broadcaster Joe Simpson really stuck it to the Dodgers last night — for taking BP in T-shirts and no socks (as shown in the video above). “Very unprofessional,” he opined. ” “If I were a Dodger fan, I’d be embarrassed.”

Last I checked, BP has no bearing on the outcome of a game and is typically witnessed by more vendors than fans. MLB’s cynical attempts to market BP attire notwithstanding, who really gives a shit what the players wear during BP. Anyone who shows up early for BP is probably the type of fan who can tell the players just from their batting stances or hairstyles anyway.

Footnote: The very unprofessional Dodgers (who are the defending National League champs and are currently leading the N.L. West by a very unprofessional game and a half) beat the Braves, 5-1. After the game, Dodgers utility man Kiké Hernández had a good rejoinder for Simpson’s critique. There’s some additional background and fallout here.

(My thanks to Chuck Kelly, Mark Coale, and MIke Chamernik for letting me know about this one.)

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Base ball game: We’ve all seen photos of players engaging in those old-timey “base ball” games played with 19th-century rules, but I haven’t seen much video from those games. The report shown above is pretty good, and provides great views of the uniforms. The only thing I’m confused about is the ball, which seems like a contemporary baseball, not an old-school lemon peel ball or other “dead” ball. Pretty sure the bats aren’t era-appropriate either. But whatever — this isn’t a Civil War reenactment, it’s just a ballgame. Good stuff.

(Big thanks to Nick Jones for this one.)

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The saddest thing ever: Russ Scibetti is the president of Kore Planning & Insights, which according to LinkedIn is “a new business intelligence consulting division focused on the sports and entertainment industry.” He’s also the founding editor of TheBusinessOfSports.com and previously worked in marketing for the New York Jets.

Yesterday he tweeted this:

My 6 year old: What are those pictures at the bottom?
Me: Those are the sponsors.
Her: What are sponsors?

How do you explain #sponsorship to a 6 year old? I went with “Those are companies that help the Jets.” Any other ideas? pic.twitter.com/hEeQP42X3K

— Russell Scibetti (@rscibetti) July 28, 2018

Scibetti’s bread is buttered by the corporate sports industrial complex, so of course he couldn’t tell his six-year-old daughter that the logos on his VIP pass are advertisements. Instead he had to say that they were from “sponsors” who “help the Jets.” Aw, isn’t that nice of them? They’re so helpful!

As we’ve discussed before, this is basically Orwellian newspeak. It’s remarkable how so many people who are connected or adjacent to the advertising industry are afraid to invoke the word “advertising.” They go out of their way to create squishy-sounding substitutes for it, hide behind verbal fig leaves, construct an entire alternate syntax designed to evoke feelings of fellowship and goodwill instead of transactional commerce (“sponsor,” “partnership,” “helping,” “presented by”) — all to avoid acknowledging that advertising is, you know, advertising.

Gee, I wonder why.

I had a good back-and-forth with Scibetti about this. He said he thought it was “funny” that his young daughter asked about the ads on his VIP pass. As I explained to him, I don’t think it’s funny at all. On the contrary, I think it’s really sad that this is the kind of world she’s growing up in, a world where every square centimeter — even on NFL summer training camp VIP passes — is just a surface or vehicle for advertising.

At the end of our back-and-forth, I asked Scibetti if he’d be willing to let me interview him so we could explore these issues in a setting unconstrained by 240-character limits. He said that sounded like fun and that he’d get back to me in a few days.

Meanwhile, as for Scibetti’s original query (i.e., how do you explain all of this to a six-year-old), I suggested that he and his daughter sit down and watch Idiocracy. That should put everything in perspective quite nicely.

(My thanks to @bryanwdc for bringing Scibetti’s tweet to my attention.)

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Even more cool stuff for sale: I’ve continued to add more photos of stuff that I’m trying to sell before I move in late August. You can see everything that’s currently available in this Flickr set, and I’ll continue to add a few more each day. I’m also removing items as they sell.

Please click on the thumbnails to see larger versions and, more importantly, to read the descriptions of the items, which among other things indicate whether the item is something I’m willing to ship or if I’m only offering in-person pickup. (You can see even larger versions of each photo by clicking the download icon and choosing “View all sizes” from the resulting popup menu.)

If you’re interested in any of this stuff, please get in touch and make me an offer. I’ll continue to add more items to this photo set each day, so stay tuned. Thanks for listening.

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Sorry, no Ticker today, as I’ve been busy dealing with a family-related matter. We’ll be back with a full slate of content tomorrow. Until then, enjoy your Sunday. — Paul