Florida Atlantic Football Stadium to be Named for For-Profit Prison Company!

Prison Donor GEO Group

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has an article on its sports pages today on the naming of Florida Atlantic University’s new football stadium for a company that runs for-profit prisons.  The article comments:

“In recent years, where stadium naming rights could be sold, universities and professional sports teams have sold them — to airlines and banks and companies that sell beer, soda, doughnuts, cars, telecommunications, razors and baseball bats. This led to memorable examples like Enron Field, the KFC Yum! Center and the University of Phoenix Stadium.

On Tuesday, that trend took another strange turn when Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton, firmed a deal to rename its football building GEO Group Stadium. Perhaps that pushed stadium naming to its zenith, if only because the GEO Group is a private prison corporation.

For this partnership, there is no obvious precedent.

The university’s president described the deal as “wonderful” and the company as “well run” and by a notable alumnus. But it also left some unsettled, including those who study the business of sports and track the privatization of the prison industry. To those critics, this was a jarring case of the lengths colleges and teams will go to produce revenue, of the way that everything seems to be for sale now in sports — and to anyone with enough cash.

“This is an example of great donor intent, terrible execution,” said Paul Swangard, the managing director at the University of Oregon Warsaw Sports Marketing Center. “Here’s a guy with strong ties to the university, who wants to make a difference, and is mixing his philanthropic interest with a marketing strategy that doesn’t make any sense.”

The GEO Group, which is based in Boca Raton, secured the naming rights with a $6 million gift, paid out over 12 years through its charitable arm, the largest such donation in Florida Atlantic’s athletic history. In a news release, the university said the money would finance athletic operations, the stadium, scholarships and “academic priorities.”

Tony

 

 

Joe Scarborough Lashes Out at Rush Limbaugh and Fox News!

Dear Commons Community,

During yesterday’s Morning Joe program on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough lashed out at the conservative “media culture” telling viewers that Rush Limbaugh and Fox News have not been good for the Republican party.   As reported in The Huffington Post:

“Scarborough urged Republicans to look beyond those two outlets. “Just for conservatives that think they have to stay in their own little media world, since Rush Limbaugh went on the air and became a national figure, Republicans have lost five out of the last six presidential elections in the popular vote,” he said. “Since Fox News went on the air in 1996, Republicans have lost four out of the five last —”

“Please keep doing what you’re doing,” co-host Mika Brzezinski joked.

“When Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon had to go up against a media culture that absolutely hated them… and there were no conservative outlets, they won 49 states,” Scarborough continued. He said that he turns to conservative outlets as well as mainstream media, but added, “for people who think they have to stay in the little box, I got bad news for you: it’s not working.”

The MSNBC host has been a vocal critic of conservative media, who he once said are “destroying the Republican party everyday,” he said in December. Scarborough has also raged against conservative bloggers — or as he calls them, “the Cheetos brigade” — for calling him and others a RINO (“Republican in name only”).

I would add that Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are making a fortune playing to the ears of the extreme right-wing conservatives.  They will never give it up.

Tony