Arizona is in the process of trying to sell naming rights to Arizona Stadium. Don’t expect the deal, when done, to wash away the UA’s debt service. Penn State last week announced it has received a $50 million naming gift from West Shore Home and will rename Beaver Stadium as West Shore Home Field at Beaver Stadium. The $50 million will be paid over 15 years, almost exactly what ASU got when it renamed Sun Devil Stadium to Mountain America Stadium: 15 years, $50 million, or roughly $3.3 million per year. In modern college sports, that $3.3 million will fund about a year’s worth of NIL money to a Top 25 men’s basketball program.
— The PGA Champions Tour’s Cologuard Classic presented dozens of beautiful views of the nearby Catalina Mountains during the Golf Channel broadcast of last week’s tournament. But the telecast was diminished because Golf Channel chose not to send play-by-play man Bob Papa and analyst Paul Azinger to Tucson. They did their work, sometimes awkwardly, from a studio in Florida. It was reminiscent of Fox Sports 1’s coverage of college football in 2023 and 2024, when they frequently had their broadcast crew at the Fox studio in Los Angeles. It was not a good precedent for TV sports coverage of any kind, especially pro golf. Do they need to save traveling expenses that badly?
— Arizona softball icon Jennie Finch was on her home turf in Fullerton, California, last week when her high school, La Mirada, named the softball facility Jennie Finch Field. She graduated from La Mirada in 1998 before becoming the nation’s leading softball pitcher at Arizona and a 2004 Olympic gold medalist under Mike Candrea. Finch is one of three Arizona All-Americans inducted into the La Mirada Sports Hall of Fame in recent years, joining 2011 UA basketball whiz Derrick Williams and Brianna Glenn, a 13-time UA track and field All-American, a two-time NCAA long jump champion and also the NCAA 200 meter champ. Finch, Williams and Glenn all were named Pac-10 Player of the Year in their sport.
— Arizona senior tennis All-American Colton Smith qualified for and played in two ATP Challengers Tour events last week. He was 64th in the Indian Wells Open and reached the quarterfinals of Phoenix’s Arizona Tennis Classic. Impressive indeed. Beyond that, Smith was paid $100,000 as the Universal Tennis Foundation’s 2025 Hurd Award Champion, which comes with a grant that goes towards Smith’s transition to becoming a professional player. Along the way, Smith beat 2023 Wimbledon quarterfinalist Fabio Fognini of Italy.
— Former Arizona assistant athletic director and fundraiser Mark Harlan, now the athletic director at Utah, performed some financial magic last week when the Utes announced they will build a new basketball arena, leaving the 15,000-seat Huntsman Center after a suitable location is found on the Utah campus. That’s news because the Huntsman Center opened in 1969, just four years before McKale Center and five years before ASU’s Desert Financial Arena. The Utes, along with New Mexico — the Pit opened in 1968 — were the leaders of an impressive movement to improve basketball facilities in the Mountain West in the ’60s and ’70s. Now, the Huntsman Center is judged to be too old to renovate for basketball. Who’s next? Hello, ASU.
