Pondscum

By Tom Hoffarth on July 19, 2006 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) |

The Anaheim Ducks are no longer mighty. And their arena is no longer made of water.

The Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim will suddenly transform into the less zippy Honda Center starting in October, which will only further confuse those who cover games at the place (Chris Berman is still refering to Angels Stadium as "The Ed" if you can belive it).

The announcement was made today by Anaheim Arena Management, LLC, the management company of Arrowhead Pond, and by American Honda Motor Co., Inc. The naming rights deal -- $60 million over 15 years -- is the first such agreement for Honda and the first name change for the 13-year-old arena.

A press conference featuring executives from both companies will be held in October. Details regarding the arrangement will be made available at that time. Like that'll matter....

(The Building Formerly Known as the Anaheim Pond of Anaheim Not of Los Angeles)

The confusion related to year-to-year changes made with arena and stadium names based on how much money a company wants to lose in unrecouped advertisement continues to baffle us. Honda, the most successful automater these days, must have some hybred Zamboni it wants to introduce to the public.

We go back to the Forum in Inglewood, which took the name "Great Western" after the bank that was around at the time, then repainted the exterior from brown to blue to match the bank's scheme. Then the bank was no more. But the name stuck, because it seemed to be just a natural fit.

The Pond was one of those very few natural fits between moniker and mansion, especially for housing a team called the Ducks. We were actually enjoying the fact that Nestle, the parent company of Arrowhead water (check the bottom of the bottle for chunks of chocolate), continued to get soaked from this naming-rights deal. We've got all kinds of information about how Nestle continues to mistreat its workers at plants in the Phillipines. But that's another story for another protest.