| By Drew Olson Senior Editor E-mail author | Author bio More articles by Drew Olson |
| Published Feb. 23, 2008 at 5:35 a.m. |
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Welcome to Saturday Scorecard. In honor of Brewers first baseman Prince Fielder, this column is served without meat or animal byproducts.
With lots of basketball on tap for the weekend, we'll get right to the good stuff.
What's in a name? A number of people in town are upset that the folks who run the Bradley Center are considering selling naming rights to the building, which was a gift to the city from Jane and Lloyd Pettit.
While the anger is understandable, given that the building was named after Jane's father, Harry Lynde Bradley, that debate is a sideshow and should not be permitted to overshadow the more important issue:
Milwaukee needs a new arena.
Months shy of its 20th anniversary, the Bradley Center is out of date. It's not falling apart. Far from it, in fact. The building still sparkles like it did during that first Blackhawks-Oilers hockey game in the fall of '88. It just doesn't have the same bells and whistles as arenas that opened later.
Modern facilities have club seats, new media facilities, restaurants, party rooms, retail outlets and lots more revenue-generating amenities that the Bradley Center lacks. Think about what the Lambeau Field atrium means to the Packers in terms of revenue and you begin to get the idea.
When word of the naming rights situation surfaced late Thursday, a few thoughts came to mind:
The Bradley Center is a lot like the "new" Comiskey Park. It opened. It was great. And within five years, it paled in comparison to a bunch of new places. (Kind of like what happened with that black and white scoreboard at County Stadium and the Jumbotrons that popped up around baseball.)
Only two arenas in the National Basketball Association (Madison Square Garden and the Izod Center) are older. Only five others (Portland, New Orleans, Charlotte, Madison Square Garden and Detroit) operate without a title sponsor.
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